The person left out at the drinking party of Nvidia, Hyundai and Samsung leaders

Nvidia CEO with Samsung and Hyundai CEOs. Photo: Yonhap .

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently made a global splash when he arrived in South Korea. On October 30, he joined Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Group Executive Chairman Chung Eui-sun for a friendly chimaek (fried chicken and beer) meal.

However, much attention has been focused on SK Group, especially its memory business under the brand SK Hynix. This unit signed a landmark AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia, which analysts considered a strategic win. The public has raised big questions about the absence of Nvidia's largest supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

According to SCMP, the absence of SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won from the media-attracting meeting was not a diplomatic snub. It was simply a matter of logistics and timing.

The dinner was not a formal gathering of Korean businessmen. Mr. Huang himself described the meeting as simply “eating fried chicken and drinking beer with friends,” not a press conference. Kkanbu, the restaurant where the three business leaders dined, only had enough space for a small group.

Moreover, Mr. Chey was in the final stages of preparation for the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit. The event took place in Gyeongju city, about 250 km from Seoul, on the evening of October 30.

Travel within that timeframe was not possible. SK Group later confirmed that Mr Chey had prioritized activities at the conference and had a separate formal meeting with Mr Huang on October 31.

While Samsung and Hyundai are in a friendly moment for the media to photograph, SK Hynix is the one that holds the real value. While everyone else is eating chicken, the company is cementing its position at the center of Korea's AI future.

At the APEC Summit on October 31, Nvidia announced an expansion of its partnership with SK Group to build an “AI factory” specializing in semiconductor research, development and manufacturing. The facility will deploy more than 50,000 Nvidia GPUs and is expected to become one of the largest AI factories in Korea when completed by the end of 2027.

At its core, the partnership strengthens SK Hynix’s position in the advanced AI platform supply chain. The two companies will jointly develop SK Hynix’s next generation of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and other advanced memory solutions for Nvidia GPUs.

During the chip design process, Nvidia will provide CUDA-X technology and PhysicsNeMo platform, an AI-based physics simulation to accelerate the chip design and verification process. SK Hynix's 40,000 employees will also be assisted by AI assistants, helping to improve work efficiency, from R&D engineers to factory operators.

Mr. Huang called SK Group a “key memory technology partner” that will help realize the creation of the world’s most advanced GPU computing platforms. Mr. Chey emphasized the shared vision between the two sides, saying that Nvidia’s AI factory will be the foundation for “building the infrastructure for the next generation of memory, robots, digital twins, and intelligent AI agents.”

Source: https://znews.vn/nguoi-bi-bo-roi-trong-bua-nhau-cua-lanh-dao-nvidia-hyundai-va-samsung-post1599520.html