"NVIDIA to Supply 'Vera Rubin' to Korea First"

Ryu Jaemyung, Vice Minister of Science and ICT: "Requested and Received a Promise from NVIDIA"
Concerns Over Korea Falling Behind in Autonomous Driving After Experiencing U.S. Technology

Vera Rubin, NVIDIA's next-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) system unveiled at CES 2026, is expected to be supplied to Korea first. This development, combined with the ongoing construction of a GPU infrastructure comprising 260,000 units, is anticipated to provide Korea with a significant advantage in the global AI computing power race.

Jaemyung Ryu, Second Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and ICT (fifth from the left), is visiting NVIDIA headquarters and taking a commemorative photo with Jay Fury, Senior Vice President (fourth from the left). The fourth from the right is Yejin Choi, a world-renowned AI scholar at NVIDIA and a professor at Stanford University. Photo by the Ministry of Science and ICT

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on January 13, Jaemyung Ryu, Second Vice Minister, who has just returned from CES 2026 and a business trip to Silicon Valley in the United States, shared the results of his visit to NVIDIA and his experiences with autonomous driving technology on his Facebook page.

During his visit to NVIDIA, Vice Minister Ryu met with Jay Fury, Senior Vice President. He explained that, based on an idea from Ha Jungwoo, Chief of AI Future Planning at the Presidential Office, he requested that Korea be the first to receive Vera Rubin, and received a positive response that this would be done.

Vice Minister Ryu stated, "Being able to use the latest GPU before anyone else is extremely significant, as it plays a crucial role in the competition for AI models."

Vera Rubin is NVIDIA's next-generation AI superchip platform, unveiled at CES 2026 as the successor to Blackwell. It is the world's first AI accelerator equipped with 6th-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4), targeting mass production in 2027.

NVIDIA's next-generation GPU Vera Rubin. Photo by Paek Jongmin, Tech Specialist

Vice Minister Ryu also confirmed that Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, is personally overseeing the establishment of the NVIDIA Research Lab in Korea. He noted that Yejin Choi, a world-renowned AI scholar and professor at Stanford University, has joined NVIDIA and is playing a key role, adding that a concrete timeline for the lab's establishment is likely to become clear soon. Vice Minister Ryu commented, "The establishment of NVIDIA's research lab in Korea demonstrates how important our country is to NVIDIA, especially as physical AI is making rapid progress."

He further mentioned that during this visit, Madison Huang, daughter of CEO Jensen Huang, personally guided him and emphasized, 'My father considers the partnership with Korea to be extremely important.'

Vice Minister Ryu also expressed a strong sense of urgency after comparing the pace of autonomous driving technology development in the United States with the current situation in Korea. After test-riding Amazon's fully autonomous vehicle 'Zoox' in Las Vegas and Google's 'Waymo' in San Francisco, he remarked, "Even though the driver's seat was empty, it felt like the car drove better than a human," and noted, "San Francisco residents routinely use Uber and Waymo, comparing prices as part of their daily lives."

He expressed concern, saying, "When I heard that Hyundai Motor is conducting test drives in the United States due to regulatory constraints in Korea, I felt regret and a desperate sense that, if we continue like this, our country could fall behind or be left out in the era of autonomous vehicles."