[DigitalToday reporter Seul-gi Son] Nvidia has begun full-scale work to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) technology center in South Korea.

A notice on Nvidia's recruitment website on Thursday showed the company posted openings for PhD-level researchers at an AI technology center based in Seoul. It is hiring separately for roles supporting foundation model development and handling physical AI.

The recruits will work with researchers at local universities and companies to provide technical advice on foundation model development. The role includes supporting use of Nvidia training and optimisation frameworks such as Megatron-LM, NeMo-RL and TensorRT-LLM. Duties also include publishing collaboration results in papers or presenting them at Nvidia's annual technology conference GTC.

Requirements include a PhD in a relevant field such as computer science, electrical and electronic engineering, physics or mathematics, and at least 5 years of end-to-end AI model experience. Preferred qualifications include academic publication records and experience in industry-academia-research collaboration.

Nvidia's AI technology center is a top-tier research and development facility operated in only about three or four key technology strategy hubs such as Singapore and Taiwan. It dispatches core PhD-level staff locally to jointly develop fundamental technologies with governments, universities and companies, and submit papers to international academic conferences.

Jensen Huang (젠슨 황), Nvidia's chief executive, arrived in Seoul on Thursday via the Seoul Gimpo Business Aviation Center on a chartered plane. "I came to Korea to strengthen cooperation with AI partners," he said. "Korea is an optimal place for R&D investment as it has strong expertise in AI and robotics and is a global manufacturing hub," he said.

"Once we have enough staff, we will also secure a site," he added. On the center's location, he said, "I think it is Seoul."

Nvidia signed a memorandum of understanding last October with Hyundai Motor Group and the government, pledging to supply 50,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) and establish an AI technology center.

Huang is known to be scheduled to meet Bae Kyung-hoon (배경훈), deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT, on June 8 to discuss cooperation on GPU supply and other matters.