Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang arrived in Seoul Friday for a packed schedule of meetings with tech leaders, promising "some surprises" for South Korea while predicting robotics will be the country's next major growth sector.
The visit comes about seven months after Huang's last trip to South Korea, when he pledged around 260,000 hi-tech chips for physical and agentic AI to the government and major firms including Samsung Electronics, SK Group and Naver.
"I have brought a lot of business to Korea. I have some surprises," he said after arriving at Gimpo International Airport.
Huang declined to elaborate further saying, "I cannot tell you. Otherwise, it would not be a surprise".
He said robotics is going to be the "next major sector here in South Korea", and that the country is "extraordinary at manufacturing, mechatronics, and also artificial intelligence".
"The fusion of all of that technology is perfect robotics," he added.
He also visited a gaming cafe run by South Korean esports organisation T1, where he met Lee Sang-Hyeok, better known as "Faker", and widely regarded as the greatest League of Legends player of all time.
Nvidia helped popularise graphics processing units (GPUs) in the late 1990s, laying the foundation for modern high-performance gaming.
Huang described South Korea as an ideal market for esports, saying the country's gamers had chosen the best GPUs to win, and that "those were Nvidia GPUs".
Scores of excited South Korean fans and gamers gathered at the cafe, looking visibly excited, filming him with smartphones as he spoke while standing beside Faker.
Huang's visit comes as a global artificial intelligence boom drives strong demand for Samsung Electronics and SK hynix memory chips, helping support South Korea's economic growth and stock market rally.
SK hynix -- the major supplier of high-bandwidth-memory products to Nvidia -- topped $1 trillion in market value for the first time last month, joining rivals Samsung Electronics and US-based Micron Technology as an AI-driven rally lifted chip stocks.
He is expected to meet executives from SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, LG Corp and Naver over grilled pork belly and soju to discuss AI chips, robotics, physical AI and data centre infrastructure.
Huang is also expected to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game and appear on one of the most popular TV shows in South Korea.
During Huang's visit last year, he drew crowds of spectators as he indulged in fried Korean chicken and beer or "chimaek" with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Eui-sun.
AFP
