Nvidia Spreads Its Bets: A $1.5 Billion Arizona Packaging Deal Meets a $950 Billion Korean Alliance
Published on 07/25/2026 at 14:31 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Nvidia is playing a two-continent game. On one side, the chip giant is deepening its domestic supply chain with a $1.5 billion expansion of its partnership with Amkor Technology in Arizona. On the other, it is anchoring a sprawling $950 billion package of agreements with South Korean conglomerates, positioning Seoul as a linchpin of the global AI infrastructure buildout. The twin announcements, coming within days of each other, underscore just how aggressively Nvidia is locking in capacity — both at home and abroad — as it races to meet demand that shows no signs of cooling.
The Amkor deal, which includes an upfront cash payment, focuses on advanced packaging and testing technologies for Nvidia's next-generation AI and high-performance computing chips. The Arizona facility will be a direct beneficiary of the investment. Debora Shoquist, a senior Nvidia executive, framed the move as part of a "generational shift" that offers a chance to revive US manufacturing and supply chains. UBS analyst Randy Abrams upgraded Amkor on the news, estimating the supplier now commands roughly 60 percent of Nvidia's Vera CPU packaging work, with potential expansion into the GB10, N1X, and future Rosa chip lines.
Across the Pacific, the scale is an order of magnitude larger. During a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in San Francisco, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced a partnership with the SK Group valued at more than $500 billion. The centerpiece is a two-gigawatt AI factory to be built by SK Telecom, powered by Nvidia's Vera-Rubin DSX platform and SK Hynix's HBM4 memory, with the first facility slated to come online in 2027. SK Hynix also entered a long-term memory partnership with Nvidia to co-develop next-generation HBM and storage technologies. The broader South Korean package, which media reports peg at $950 billion, includes a separate memorandum from Samsung with Broadcom worth up to $200 billion for memory, foundry capacity, and packaging.
The deals extend well beyond semiconductors. Huang announced a self-driving Genesis sedan project with Hyundai Motor, alongside a joint robotics platform under what Hyundai Chairman Euisun Chung called a "Physical AI" strategy. Naver is planning a $10 billion AI data center, with Nvidia contributing roughly $1 billion and Brookfield up to $9 billion; the existing GAK Sejong facility will expand from 55 to 200 megawatts by 2028, with a long-term target of one gigawatt of sovereign AI capacity. A new "AI Frontier Lab" in South Korea, a $300 million joint laboratory with KAIST over five years to build a Korean-language model, and energy-system discussions with LG round out the commitments. Microsoft, Anthropic, and AWS were also folded into the SK framework, including a memory supply deal from SK Hynix to Microsoft and an SK Telecom-Anthropic memorandum for a gigawatt data center.
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Yet the headline numbers have drawn skepticism. No official press release or government filing confirming the $500 billion figure for the SK partnership had emerged by Friday. The sum would exceed twice Nvidia's entire annual revenue of $215.9 billion last fiscal year. Critics argue the real story is less about a precisely quantified investment than about SK Hynix's deepening role as Nvidia's primary HBM supplier. What is indisputable is Nvidia's financial firepower: the company generated $125.6 billion in operating cash flow and posted 70.7 percent revenue growth in its most recent quarter.
The stock market's reaction has been muted. Nvidia shares closed Friday at €182.00, down 0.80 percent, and remain roughly 10 percent below the 52-week high of €202.50 set in mid-May. Year to date, the stock is up 13.55 percent. The tempered response reflects a broader debate among investors about whether the blistering growth rates of recent years are sustainable. Wall Street analysts project revenue growth of 219 percent between fiscal 2026 and 2029 — a sharp deceleration from the 700 percent of the prior three years. A Motley Fool analysis noted that Nvidia's 2026 gain of roughly 12 percent barely outpaces the S&P 500, raising questions about what comes next.
The operational picture, however, remains robust. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, which ended April 26, 2026, Nvidia reported record revenue of $81.6 billion, an 85 percent increase year over year. The next quarterly results, due August 26, will be the first real test of whether the Korean commitments are translating into actual orders for data-center chips.
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Structural risks persist. Major cloud customers — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta — are developing their own chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia's graphics processors. The China business remains constrained by US export rules, though limited shipments of the H200 AI chip have been approved for Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and ZTE. Chinese customers had previously signaled interest in more than two million H200 chips at roughly $27,000 each. Nvidia's current guidance excludes China data-center revenue entirely, meaning any reopening there would represent upside rather than a baked-in assumption.
For now, the Amkor deal offers an early signal that Nvidia's supply-chain expansion is accelerating on both sides of the Pacific. Investors will watch the upcoming earnings reports from Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Alphabet for evidence that hyperscaler AI spending is translating into actual chip orders. If those numbers confirm the trajectory implied by the Korean and Arizona commitments, the current stock price may look like a bargain. If they don't, the gap between Nvidia's grand ambitions and market reality will only widen.
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