Nvidia has forecast that, as the physical AI industry grows, South Korea could take on a key role in the global AI supply chain.

So-young Jung (정소영), CEO of Nvidia Korea, said at a special lecture during the "Physical AI Alliance Day" event held on Tuesday at COEX in Seoul's Gangnam district that South Korea could play the supply-chain role Taiwan has held in the traditional data centre industry in the physical AI field going forward.

Jung said Taiwan has built an important supply chain in the conventional data centre business. As the physical AI industry grows, she added, "I hope South Korea can sufficiently take over those roles."

As an example of cooperation with South Korean companies, she cited LG. LG announced cooperation with Nvidia last August in humanoid robots, AI factories and mobility, and has said it plans to unveil a humanoid robot applying Nvidia's robot foundation model (RFM), "Isaac Groot," in the first quarter of next year.

Jung added that the two companies are working closely in physical AI and that meaningful results will come out soon.

She cited securing data and simulation technology as key tasks for commercialising physical AI. Data that can be collected in real environments is limited, and safety and cost issues also arise in the process of deploying robots in the field.

Nvidia proposed generating synthetic data that reflects physical laws through products such as the world foundation model "Cosmos" and using it for robot training and verification.

Jung forecast that demand for related computing will continue to expand, saying physical AI operates based on 3D data and therefore requires more computing resources than existing large language models (LLMs).