SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won reunited in Korea with Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and chief executive officer, in less than a week. The two "AI heavyweights" held a separate meeting at the GTC Taipei and Computex events in Taiwan on the 1st and 2nd, and continued their solid "AI alliance" with additional encounters, including during a tour of the SK hynix booth.
On the 5th, Chey had dinner with CEO Jensen Huang at a samgyeopsal restaurant in Hongdae, Seoul. It appears to reflect Huang's taste for trying popular local foods while traveling in the United States, China and Taiwan. The two also enjoyed Korean-style fried chicken together in February in Santa Clara, United States, where Nvidia is headquartered, so this samgyeopsal meeting was also a return visit by Huang.
Publicly known meetings between the two have totaled six over the past seven months. Chairman Chey and CEO Jensen Huang have met in the United States and Taiwan since APEC in Gyeongju in October last year. Given the intensive meetings in a short period, analysts say the topics on the table have expanded beyond simple semiconductor supply to discussions on the growth of the global AI market and the broader ecosystem.
Cooperation between SK Group and Nvidia is expanding across the board beyond HBM and GPUs. In October last year, SK Group and Nvidia agreed to build a "manufacturing AI cloud" to drive AI innovation in Korea's manufacturing ecosystem. SK Group is to build the "Omniverse platform," powered by Nvidia GPUs, and open it to SK Group affiliates, Korean public institutions and startups. Omniverse is a "Digital Twin platform" that replicates manufacturing processes in an online three-dimensional (3D) virtual space for simulation.
SK Telecom is participating in the development of AI-RAN (radio access network), a core technology for sixth-generation (6G) mobile communications that Nvidia is pursuing, collaborating on R&D, demonstrations and the discovery of AI services specialized for AI-RAN. CEO Jensen Huang also drew attention by naming SK Telecom as a strategic partner in his keynote at "GTC Taipei" in Taiwan on the 1st.
Based on the trust, collaboration and capabilities built between the two companies, the "AI triangular alliance" linking SK hynix, Nvidia and TSMC—reportedly first conceived by Chairman Chey—is expected to gain further momentum. Huang has expressed confidence in SK hynix's semiconductor capabilities, including HBM, and on the 3rd, Chey and TSMC Chairman Wei Zhejia held a separate meeting in Taiwan to strengthen their commitment to technological cooperation for developing AI Semiconductor chips, indicating that relations among the three companies are becoming even closer.
Some say the significance of this samgyeopsal meeting lies in Chairman Chey, as the elder statesman of the business community, meeting CEO Jensen Huang together with leading domestic players such as LG and Naver to demonstrate a resolve to pioneer the global AI market with Korea. This is because Korea's key corporations' unrivaled manufacturing, mobility and software capabilities are essential to complete Nvidia's envisioned physical AI and region-specialized sovereign AI ecosystems. For Nvidia, it is interpreted as an opportunity to gain a panoramic view of Korea's capabilities and join hands through Chairman Chey, with whom it has maintained a close relationship.
A business community official said, "SK and Nvidia began their first collaboration in the semiconductor supply chain, but as the importance of overall AI infrastructure is emphasized, the two sides are likely discussing cooperation across a broader scope," adding, "Chairman Chey has been running tirelessly to build trust with Jensen Huang, and these efforts appear to be helping lay the groundwork for Korea and Korean corporations to lead the global AI market."