South Korea to Buy 10,000 AI Accelerators to Keep Up with the World

One of the main events at the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidential term was the announcement of the Stargate project, which implies record financial investments in the creation of the most powerful computing infrastructure for AI in the United States. South Korea is trying to keep up with its overseas partner, and is therefore ready to purchase 10,000 computing accelerators this year.

Image source: NVIDIA

This was reported by Reuters, citing statements by South Korean President Choi Sang-mok: “As competition for dominance in the AI ​​industry intensifies, the competitive landscape is shifting from standoffs between companies to a full-scale rivalry between national innovation ecosystems.” According to the South Korean president, the country’s authorities intend to purchase 10,000 GPUs by September of this year for use in a national computing center that will work on solving problems in the field of artificial intelligence.

The purchase of accelerators will be carried out within the framework of a private-public partnership, but who will be the supplier of these GPUs is not specified. Most likely, we are talking about Nvidia products, because it controls at least 80% of the market for these products. Moreover, South Korea is lucky enough to be among the 18 countries that can receive advanced computing accelerators from the United States for their own needs with virtually no restrictions. Detailed conditions for this purchase will be determined by September of this year.

High demand for such accelerators is forcing the market to change rapidly. Last week, for example, it became known that OpenAI intends to complete the development of its own AI chip in a few months. Taiwanese company TSMC may start producing it using 3-nm technology starting next year. At the very least, such OpenAI accelerators will definitely come in handy within the framework of the same American Stargate project.