NVIDIA, Rebellions and SK Telecom have announced a collaboration to advance Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure — using NVIDIA NVLink Fusion to bring together NVIDIA's open infrastructure platform, Rebellions' Korean-designed AI processors and SK Telecom's AI data center, model and service capabilities.
NVIDIA, Rebellions, and SK Telecom announce a collaboration to advance Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure
Rebellions will use NVLink Fusion to connect its Rebel R200 NPUs to the NVIDIA platform
Rebellions will harness the NVIDIA MGX rack architecture for rack-scale system development
SK Telecom plans to deploy these systems using its AI data center operations expertise
The collaboration is supported by Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT
Rebellions' R200 systems are expected to be ready for deployment in 2028
The companies plan to use NVIDIA GPUs for prefill and Rebellions NPUs for decode in disaggregated inference
As part of the agreement, Rebellions will use NVLink Fusion to connect its Rebel R200 neural processing units (NPUs) to the NVIDIA platform, and harness the NVIDIA MGX rack architecture for rack-scale system development. SK Telecom plans to deploy these systems, drawing on its AI data center operations expertise, proprietary models and services.
Supported by Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), the collaboration aims to support AI services tailored to Korea's language, industries and priorities, connecting Korean semiconductor development with the systems and operational capabilities needed to deliver AI at scale.
"Korea has the talent, technology and industrial ambition to become a world leader in AI," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Sovereign AI gives nations the power to turn their language, culture and expertise into intelligence. With NVLink Fusion, Korea's chipmakers can connect their custom ASICs to NVIDIA's AI factory platform, tightly coupling their processors with NVIDIA compute to run AI workloads. Together with MSIT, Rebellions and SK Telecom, we're building the computing foundation for Korea to produce its own intelligence and power its next industrial revolution."
"Today's announcement marks a turning point, opening a new chapter for sovereign AI by connecting Korea's AI silicon and models with global systems technology," said Sunghyun Park, cofounder and CEO of Rebellions. "By integrating Rebellions' purpose-built silicon and system design with NVIDIA's NVLink Fusion, high-speed interconnects and rack-scale design expertise, and SKT's model and data center operations capabilities, we will deliver low-latency and energy-efficient inference for frontier models at scale."
"This collaboration is meaningful in that it validates the potential of next-generation sovereign AI infrastructure by combining global AI infrastructure technology with Korean AI semiconductors," said Jung Jai-hun, president and CEO of SK Telecom. "By linking SKT's AI data centers, proprietary AI models including A.X K2, and public-facing AI services developed under the 'AI for All' project, we will strengthen our full-stack sovereign AI competitiveness and contribute to the growth of Korea's AI ecosystem."
NVLink Fusion extends NVIDIA's vertically integrated, horizontally open AI platform to custom XPUs. It enables chipmakers to combine specialized silicon with NVIDIA's high-bandwidth, low-latency scale-up networking and established infrastructure ecosystem, helping improve performance, reduce deployment risk and accelerate time to market.
Rebellions is developing its next-generation R200 NPU, optimized for low-latency and energy-efficient inference using frontier models, including multitrillion-parameter mixture-of-experts models. Through NVLink Fusion, Rebellions will connect its R200 NPUs within a rack through NVIDIA NVLink scale-up networking.
The NVIDIA MGX rack architecture and reference designs will support development of the systems, while the MGX ecosystem gives Rebellions access to an established supply chain of original design manufacturers and component suppliers.
SK Telecom brings experience building and operating AI data centers, alongside its proprietary foundation models and public-facing AI services. Building on its long-standing collaboration with NVIDIA in AI development and sovereign infrastructure, SK Telecom plans to connect these capabilities and deploy them in its AI data center using the standardized MGX rack architecture to deliver full-stack sovereign AI.
The MGX rack architecture provides a foundation for GPU and NPU systems to share data center design elements, including rack footprint, power delivery and cooling. This approach can support infrastructure planning alongside Rebellions' processor and system development.
The companies plan to develop an approach to disaggregated inference, assigning different stages of AI response generation to the processor architecture best suited to each task. Their planned work includes using NVIDIA GPUs for prefill and Rebellions NPUs for decode to improve inference throughput and power efficiency.
SK Telecom plans to connect this infrastructure with its proprietary foundation models and public-facing services, including those under the government's AI for All project, to advance its full-stack sovereign AI strategy.
MSIT is supporting collaboration between NVIDIA and Korean NPU companies, beginning with Rebellions and SK Telecom, to strengthen Korea's sovereign AI infrastructure.
"This collaboration with NVIDIA marks a significant step forward, as it enables Korean-developed NPUs to enter the computing infrastructure market alongside NVIDIA, a global leader in AI computing, through NVLink Fusion," said Bae Kyung-hoon, Korea Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Science and Information and Communication Technologies. "The government will actively support this collaboration to deliver tangible results and further advance cooperation with NVIDIA across a range of areas, including physical AI and securing GPU supply."
By connecting Korean-developed processors and models with NVIDIA infrastructure and SK Telecom's data center expertise, the companies aim to establish a foundation for sovereign AI services across Korea's public and private sectors.
About Rebellions
Rebellions develops inference accelerators for enterprises and nations, bringing together computing performance, energy efficiency and supply chain resilience. Its flagship Rebel100 is built specifically for inference, with a focus on maximizing performance relative to both cost and power use. A chiplet architecture supports demanding AI workloads, complemented by a full software stack built entirely on open-source technologies and open standards. Rebellions has commercial deployments in enterprise and government environments and helps organizations and countries build AI infrastructure they can own and control. Based in South Korea and operating in the United States, the company is backed by Aramco, Arm, Kindred Ventures, KT, Mirae Asset Group, Samsung, SK Hynix and SK Telecom.
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom has been a leader in telecommunications since 1984. Today, the company drives innovation across the full-stack AI ecosystem—encompassing infrastructure, models, and services—to create value for industries, customers, and society.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.
