Jensen Huang, the CEO of leading artificial intelligence (AI) chip maker Nvidia, is scheduled to meet with Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, on the 8th during the world’s largest IT exhibition, CES 2025, in Las Vegas.
CEO Huang noted during a global press conference held at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Las Vegas on the 7th that he plans to meet with Chairman Chey the next day, stating, “I am very much looking forward to meeting with Chairman Chey.” However, he did not mention specific details about the schedule. Chairman Chey is reported to be visiting Las Vegas to attend CES.
CEO Huang and Chairman Chey are expected to discuss ways to expand their collaboration on high-bandwidth memory (HBM). HBM is a high-performance semiconductor that enhances computing speed by stacking multiple DRAM chips vertically and is a key component used in AI accelerators. SK Hynix is essentially the sole supplier of HBM to Nvidia, which dominates 90% of the AI accelerator market. Since last year, SK Hynix began supplying Nvidia with 8-layer and 12-layer versions of the fifth-generation HBM, HBM3E, making it the first memory manufacturer to do so, following the HBM3, the fourth generation.
However, SK Hynix alone cannot meet the demand for AI chips, leading to predictions that Nvidia will also source HBM3E from Samsung Electronics, but CEO Huang stated that they are still testing Samsung's HBM. He remarked, “SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics are great memory companies,” adding, “The Samsung HBM is under testing, and I believe they will do well shortly.”
When asked, “Why does the testing take so long?” he responded, “Korea tends to be very impatient, and that’s a positive thing,” while suggesting, “But they (Samsung) have to engineer a new design, and they can achieve it.” CEO Huang stated, “Samsung Electronics was the first to produce HBM, and the HBM that Nvidia first used in the past was also from Samsung,” expressing confidence by saying, “As a great memory company, they will recover and succeed in the testing.”