SK Telecom partners with VAST Data to launch Korea’s largest sovereign AI cloud, powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Asia Cloud reports on its national AI impact.
South Korea is raising the stakes in the global AI race. SK Telecom (SKT) has teamed up with VAST Data to build the country’s largest sovereign AI cloud, powered by NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Dubbed the Haein Cluster, the platform accelerates national AI development by provisioning GPU resources in minutes instead of weeks.
Inside Korea’s Haein Cluster
At the heart of SKT’s Petasus AI Cloud, VAST Data’s AI Operating System underpins a multi-tenant, sovereign GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) environment.
- Selected by Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT to power the AI Computing Resource Utilization Program
- Enables foundation model training at national scale
- Provides GPU environments in <10 minutes with near bare-metal performance
Supporting the cluster:
- Supermicro delivered the NVIDIA HGX servers
- VAST Data’s DASE architecture ensures resilience, scale, and simplified AI pipelines
Why It Matters – Asia Cloud View
From an Asia Cloud perspective, Korea’s sovereign AI push addresses four major imperatives:
- Speed without compromise – near bare-metal GPU performance provisioned in under 10 minutes
- Sovereign control – all AI services run within Korea’s borders for compliance and data protection
- Scalable & elastic – dynamic GPU allocation for both government and enterprise AI workloads
- Simplified pipelines – unified infrastructure for model training and inference at scale
As DK Lee, Head of SKT’s AI DC Lab, explains:
“The VAST AI OS powers the performance, simplicity, and flexibility needed to support the next generation of sovereign AI workloads, and gives us the confidence to scale fast and securely.”
Strategic Implications
By combining telecom-grade networks, sovereign cloud policies, and next-gen GPUs, SK Telecom is positioning both itself and South Korea as leaders in secure, sovereign AI infrastructure.
This isn’t just about GPUs but also sovereign capability. Korea’s AI cloud now becomes a strategic backbone for national innovation, setting the stage for how countries may balance AI competitiveness with sovereignty and security.