Jensen Huang, chief executive of US chip giant Nvidia, is set to visit South Korea later this week for a series of meetings with the heads of the country's most powerful conglomerates, with discussions expected to span artificial intelligence infrastructure, semiconductors, and the emerging field of physical AI — the integration of AI with real-world machines and robots.
Huang is scheduled to arrive in Seoul on Thursday night following his appearance at the Computex trade show in Taipei, where Nvidia also hosted a "Korean Partner Night" event attended by executives from Samsung and SK Hynix. Friday meetings are expected to include SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, and Lee Hae-jin, founder and board chair of Naver, the South Korean internet and technology giant. Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun is also reported to be positively considering attending. Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong is not expected to participate due to overseas commitments.
Huang may also visit Naver 1784, the company's 28-storey office building in Gyeonggi Province, south of Seoul, which serves as a test bed for Naver's robotics, cloud, and 5G technologies. The visit, tentatively planned for the following Monday, would follow a similar trip by AMD chief Lisa Su in March, during which she signed a memorandum of understanding with Naver on AI infrastructure partnerships. Naver declined to comment on the planned visit.
News of the upcoming meetings sent South Korean tech stocks sharply higher on Monday. Samsung Electronics shares jumped 9.5 per cent, lifting its market capitalisation above 2,000 trillion won (approximately $1.32 trillion), while LG Electronics — which is expanding aggressively into robotics — surged 28 per cent. Samsung was separately buoyed by reports that it had begun shipping samples of its latest high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip, a component critical to AI data centres and a key product for Nvidia's supply chain.
The visit underscores South Korea's growing centrality to the global AI hardware ecosystem. Nvidia announced last year that it would supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced AI chips to South Korea's government and major corporations. Huang's return — just seven months after his previous visit for the APEC CEO Summit in the southeastern city of Gyeongju — signals that those ties are deepening, with industry analysts noting that the talks could yield concrete cooperation agreements in both AI and robotics. "Jensen's visit to Korea has a major implication. Nvidia needs Korea," said Jeff Kim, an analyst at KB Securities.