NVIDIA and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have announced the launch of a joint AI research laboratory at the KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in Seoul, dedicated to advancing agentic AI for South Korea.
The collaboration will establish a robust academic AI research program, bringing together NVIDIA full-stack AI expertise, NVIDIA Nemotron™ open models and NVIDIA AI Cloud partner computing with the world-class scientific talent at KAIST, one of Asia’s premier research universities.
The lab will be established at the KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in Seoul. KAIST, headquartered in the tech hub of Daejeon, has a strong focus on public research spanning engineering, AI, semiconductor technology, robotics and digital humanities.
The joint lab plans to fund at least 10 KAIST researchers annually and provide each with internship opportunities at NVIDIA. In addition, NVIDIA plans to hire exceptional Korean researchers for full-time positions. Together, these efforts will create stronger pathways for Korea’s top AI talent to pursue ambitious research, build long-term careers and deepen global collaboration between academia and industry.
The $300 million collaboration is expected to include $50-million-per-year compute contributions across an initial five-year period. Compute infrastructure from local NVIDIA Cloud Partners will provide researchers with direct access to the latest NVIDIA AI infrastructure.
Among the lab’s priorities will be developing models optimized for the Korean language and Korea-specific use cases, with NVIDIA Nemotron open models to advance the country’s AI capabilities, fostering a pipeline from academic discovery to enterprise and national AI deployments.
