NVIDIA, Rebellions and SK Telecom Team Up on Sovereign AI With NVLink Fusion

NVIDIA, South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions and SK Telecom announced on November 9 at NVIDIA AI Day in Seoul that they will work together to advance Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure, using NVIDIA NVLink Fusion to connect Rebellions' next-generation Rebel R200 neural processing units (NPUs) to NVIDIA's open infrastructure platform. SK Telecom plans to deploy the systems in its AI data center; R200 systems are expected to be ready for deployment in 2028. (Image: file photo of an NVIDIA A100 chip.)

Korean silicon joins NVIDIA's platform, splitting inference work

Under the agreement, Rebellions will connect its R200 processors through NVLink Fusion and use NVIDIA's MGX rack architecture to develop rack-scale systems. The companies plan to use disaggregated inference, with NVIDIA GPUs handling prefill and Rebellions NPUs handling decode, to improve inference throughput and power efficiency. The R200 is designed for low-latency, energy-efficient inference on frontier models, including mixture-of-experts models with trillions of parameters. Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT is supporting the collaboration.

SK Telecom to deploy full-stack sovereign AI under 'AI for All'

SK Telecom will deploy the systems in its AI data center, combining them with its proprietary foundation models, including A.X K2, and public-facing AI services to advance its full-stack sovereign AI strategy; the services fall under the Korean government's 'AI for All' project. NVIDIA is also working with three Korean consortia and four domestic foundation-model builders, using its Dynamo software to optimize inference, covering SK Telecom's A.X K2, LG AI Research's EXAONE 2.0, Upstage's Solar Open 2 and Motif Technologies' Motif-3; NVIDIA says the deployment recipes deliver up to twice the out-of-the-box performance on B200 GPUs.

Huang: helping Korea produce its own intelligence

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said Korea has the talent, technology and industrial ambition to become a world leader in AI, and that sovereign AI gives nations the power to turn their language, culture and expertise into intelligence. Bae Kyung-hoon, Korea's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, said the government will actively support the collaboration to deliver tangible results and deepen cooperation with NVIDIA in areas including physical AI and securing GPU supply. Rebellions CEO Park Sung-hyun called the announcement a turning point that opens a new chapter for sovereign AI. The memorandum of understanding was signed at NVIDIA AI Day Seoul 2026, held at COEX in Seoul's Gangnam district.