NVIDIA, Samsung and Hyundai Forge Stronger U.S.-Korean AI Silicon Alliance
At Nvidia’s annual GTC 2026 developer conference in California, Jensen Huang announced a major collaboration with Samsung and Hyundai on Nvidia’s next-generation AI hardware. The company’s Vera Rubin AI chip will incorporate Samsung’s HBM4E memory, signaling an intensified U.S.-Korean technology alliance around AI silicon.
Samsung publicly unveiled real HBM4E memory chips and the core-die wafer for the first time at the event. The HBM4E memory supports 16 Gbps per pin and 4.0 TB/s bandwidth, a performance edge over the previous generation’s 13 Gbps and 3.3 TB/s.
Samsung described the development as the result of an integrated effort across memory design, its own foundry capabilities, logic design, and advanced packaging. The collaboration aims to optimize performance by tightly coordinating Samsung’s end-to-end capabilities.
During his keynote, Huang thanked Samsung, noting that Samsung is manufacturing the Groq3 language-processing unit (LPU) chip for Vera Rubin and that production is being ramped up quickly. He said shipments are expected to begin in the second half of this year.
Huang also announced a collaboration with ride-hailing company Uber to bring Level-4 autonomous driving by 2027, with Hyundai Motor and Kia positioned as partners in the effort. The alliance points to Nvidia’s push to embed its autonomy tech in consumer and commercial vehicles.
The plan calls for Hyundai and Kia to combine their own SDV capabilities with Nvidia’s autonomous-driving technology to co-develop next-generation solutions. Hyundai and Kia are expected to apply Nvidia Level-2+ autonomy in some models initially, with the long-term goal of expanding toward Level-4 robo-taxi operations.
A U.S.-based autonomous-vehicles joint venture, Motional, will lead broad collaboration on Level-4 robo-taxi technology and services, coordinating technology and service development across the ecosystem. This arrangement highlights cross-border collaboration aimed at accelerating scalable autonomous mobility.
The Reuters photo caption notes Huang’s Korea visit followed a high-profile meeting during last year’s APEC summit in Seoul, where he was photographed with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun. The image underscores ongoing strategic ties among Nvidia and Korea’s tech giants.