PLUS: Tech's $400B AI spending spree, Japan vs Sora 2, and OpenAI's hardware bet
Good morning
NVIDIA is partnering with South Korea's government and its largest corporations in a landmark deal to build a national sovereign AI infrastructure. The initiative will see over a quarter-million GPUs deployed to embed intelligence across the country's key industries.
The move establishes a powerful template for how a nation can fundamentally reorient its economy around AI production. The key question is whether this massive, hardware-focused investment will be enough to position South Korea as a leader in the global race for AI dominance?
In today’s Next in AI:
NVIDIA's plan to rewire South Korea with 260k GPUs
Big Tech’s $400B AI infrastructure spending spree
Japanese anime giants challenge OpenAI’s Sora 2
The latest updates in AI coding and productivity tools
NVIDIA Rewires South Korea
Next in AI: NVIDIA announced a historic partnership with South Korea’s government and its largest corporations—including Samsung, Hyundai, and LG—to build a national sovereign AI infrastructure powered by over 260,000 GPUs.
Decoded:
The massive public-private initiative involves deploying over 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs across sovereign clouds and dedicated industrial AI factories built by titans like Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, and NAVER.
This isn't just about cloud computing; Samsung is building an AI factory to embed intelligence throughout its operations, using digital twins and NVIDIA Omniverse to simulate and optimize its entire semiconductor manufacturing process.
The investment goes beyond hardware to build a complete ecosystem, with government projects to create foundational Korean language models and a new Center of Excellence for quantum computing research.
Why It Matters: This partnership provides a powerful blueprint for how a nation can rewire its entire industrial base for intelligence. South Korea is moving to position itself not just as a consumer of AI, but as a primary producer and exporter of AI-driven products.
The $400B AI Spending Spree
Next in AI: Big Tech is in an all-out AI arms race, with Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon collectively committing nearly $400 billion to infrastructure this year alone. All four have signaled plans to spend even more in 2026, raising questions about when these massive bets will pay off.
Decoded:
The spending spree is a direct response to soaring AI demand that is outpacing the available supply of computing power, with execs stating they are still running up against capacity constraints.
Wall Street showed mixed reactions to the plans, rewarding Amazon and Google for their cloud-based monetization strategies while pushing down shares for Meta and Microsoft amid concerns over their return on investment.
A key driver behind the massive budgets is the long-term race to achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence), a goal companies believe will offer a massive competitive advantage to whoever reaches it first.
Why It Matters: This historic level of investment signals a foundational shift toward an AI-powered future, moving beyond research and into massive infrastructure build-outs. The immediate challenge for these giants is to translate their spending into clear, profitable products before investor patience runs thin.
Japan's Anime Giants vs. OpenAI
Next in AI: A powerful coalition of Japan’s top media companies has submitted a written request to OpenAI, demanding it stop training its video-generation model, Sora 2, on their copyrighted content without permission.
Decoded:
The demand comes from Japan's Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), representing major players like Studio Ghibli, Square Enix, Aniplex, and Bandai Namco.
CODA argues that many of Sora 2's generated videos closely resemble Japanese anime and games, suggesting the model was trained on their works and that the act itself may constitute copyright infringement.
While OpenAI offers an opt-out for rights holders, CODA states that under Japanese law, prior permission is required, and a subsequent opt-out does not excuse the initial unauthorized use of their content to train the model behind Sora 2’s outputs.
Why It Matters: This move marks a significant new front in the global battle over AI training data and intellectual property rights. The outcome of this dispute could set a powerful precedent for how generative AI models are developed and regulated across the world.
AI Tools Roundup
Latest Developments in AI Coding Assistants
AI-powered coding tools continue to reshape software development workflows. Recent updates show these assistants are moving beyond simple autocomplete to understand entire codebases.
Key highlights:
GitHub Copilot now offers multi-file editing capabilities, allowing developers to refactor across entire projects
Cursor AI has introduced a new composer feature that can build complete features from natural language descriptions
Replit's AI agent can now deploy full-stack applications autonomously
Productivity Tool Innovations
The latest wave of AI productivity tools focuses on reducing context switching and automating routine tasks.
Notable launches:
Notion AI expanded its capabilities to generate complete project plans from brief descriptions
ChatGPT's canvas mode enables collaborative editing and iterative refinement
Claude now supports longer context windows, making it more effective for document analysis
Bottom Line
AI tools are transitioning from experimental features to essential workflow components. The focus has shifted from raw capability to seamless integration with existing tools and processes.
AI Pulse
OpenAI acquired Jony Ive's hardware startup io for a reported $6.5 billion to develop a new generation of consumer devices built for the AI era.
Microsoft's filings suggest partner OpenAI suffered a net loss of over $11.5 billion last quarter, according to equity accounting rules detailed in its latest earnings report.
LayerX Security identified a vulnerability in OpenAI's new ChatGPT Atlas browser that could allow attackers to inject malicious code by exploiting its AI memory function.
Albania's Prime Minister announced its AI-generated minister, Diella, is pregnant with 83 AI assistants that will record parliamentary sessions and support every member of parliament.