PwC Consulting: Korean Companies Must Undergo Structural Changes for the Era of Physical AI

Publication of the "GTC 2026" Analysis Report

There is a recommendation that domestic companies should proactively change their organizational structures, security systems, and decision-making frameworks to prepare for the spread of agent and physical artificial intelligence (AI).

PwC Consulting announced that it has published the report "The Future of the AI Ecosystem Led by NVIDIA: Focusing on GTC 2026," based on NVIDIA's global AI conference GTC (GPU Technology Conference) 2026, which was held in San Jose, California, USA from March 16 to 19, 2026 (local time). GTC is an annual technology conference hosted by NVIDIA.

The report emphasizes that GTC has become more than just an event for unveiling NVIDIA’s new products; it has established itself as a platform for presenting the AI roadmap that will shape the era of AI. For example, it explains that the AI industry is being reorganized from a single-chip or individual model-centric approach to a multi-layered system competition involving inference accelerators, AI factories, open agent stacks, and physical AI. In particular, the report analyzes that NVIDIA is gaining a first-mover advantage in the market by introducing open-source products.

At this year’s GTC, NVIDIA announced that it had equipped its next-generation AI computing platform, "Vera Rubin," with the language processing chip (LPU) from Groq. Unlike a GPU, which is used for AI training, an LPU is a semiconductor mainly used for inference tasks. According to the report, "the performance metric for AI accelerators has shifted from GPU computational power to the optimization of the entire system performing inference." Products based on "Vera Rubin" are expected to be supplied starting in the second half of this year, and the report notes that competition between Samsung Electronics and SK hynix over market share for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) 4 is likely to intensify.

The report highlights optical communication as a technology that can resolve bottlenecks in data transmission and energy inefficiency, and analyzes that NVIDIA’s recent investments in optical and laser component companies are part of this official strategy. The report diagnoses that, with the unveiling of the enterprise AI agent platform "Nemoclo" and the robot training platform at this GTC, NVIDIA is transforming into a comprehensive AI company, not only providing AI infrastructure but also targeting application fields.

In response to the changes presented at GTC, the report stresses that domestic manufacturing, mobility, and robotics companies need structural changes in their organizational and security domains that are appropriate for the era of agentic and physical AI. It also advises that these companies should actively consider whether to join this ecosystem, including establishing partnerships with NVIDIA.

Hongki Moon, CEO of PwC Consulting, said, "GTC has become a benchmark for global companies’ AI strategies, not just a technical event for developers," adding, "The direction presented by NVIDIA is increasingly becoming the industry standard within one to two years, so domestic companies should pay close attention to GTC and devise their future AI strategies accordingly."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.