Jensen Huang is set to visit Korea to meet with the heads of SK Group and LG! Itinerary revealed: Barbecue banquet, variety show debut, baseball first pitch.
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will arrive in Seoul this Friday, beginning a four-day visit to South Korea, during which he will meet intensively with the heads of major Korean conglomerates, appear on variety shows, attend baseball games, and launch a comprehensive "charm offensive" beyond business meetings.
According to reports from Yonhap News Agency and Reuters on Thursday, Jensen Huang will arrive at Gimpo International Airport in Seoul by private jet on Friday afternoon, then head to a Korean barbecue restaurant in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, for dinner with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chairman Euisun Chung, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, and Naver Founder and Chairman Lee Hae-jin.
Industry observers expect in-depth discussions on cooperation in areas such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), AI data centers, autonomous driving, robotics, and physical AI.
This is Jensen Huang’s second visit to South Korea in seven months, reflecting the country’s increasingly prominent position in Nvidia’s global strategic landscape. Seoul KB Securities analyst Jeff Kim noted in a research report that Nvidia’s dependence on Korean suppliers is rising, and believes Korea is becoming the "ideal testing ground" for physical AI.
Busy Schedule: Barbecue, Baseball, Variety Shows All Included
The richness of this visit far exceeds a typical business trip.
On Sunday, Jensen Huang will wear a Doosan Bears jersey and throw the ceremonial first pitch for the Bears’ home game against the Kiwoom Heroes, with Doosan Group Chairman Park Jeong-won serving as the ceremonial leadoff batter. Notably, Doosan Group's business covers robotics research and produces materials used in Nvidia’s Blackwell chips.
On the entertainment front, Jensen Huang will appear on the popular Korean variety show "You Quiz on the Block," produced by CJ ENM and dubbed the Korean version of "The Jimmy Fallon Show." This will be the leather jacket CEO’s first appearance on a Korean variety show.
On Monday, Jensen Huang will also hold a closed-door meeting in Seoul with executives from Korean AI and robotics startups—reportedly, this will be his first formal meeting with founders of robotics startups in Korea. He also plans to visit the AI Research Institute and Robotics Research Center at Seoul National University, and intends to communicate directly with students.
Leaders Index corporate analysis agency head Park Ju-gun notes that Jensen Huang learned from his visit to Korea last October—when he shared "fried chicken and beer" with Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee and Euisun Chung at a chicken shop, drawing massive media attention. Huang himself hinted at this trip in Taipei with his trademark casual style: "I might go to Korea for fried chicken or barbecue pork belly."
With SK Group: Four Meetings in Six Months, Cooperation Intensifies
This visit to Seoul marks the fourth meeting between Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won within half a year, an unusually frequent occurrence in the industry.
The two first met in Silicon Valley in February last year, then again this March at the GTC 2026 conference in San Jose. On June 1, they held talks during Taipei Computex, delving deep into cooperation prospects in AI storage.
The last meeting in Taipei coincided with SK Hynix reaching a milestone market value of $1 trillion; the two discussed the significance of this milestone and reaffirmed their commitment to jointly developing AI infrastructure fields.
During Computex, Chey Tae-won said he plans to double memory production capacity within the next five years to alleviate the serious supply-demand imbalance in memory chips, and believes the memory shortage will persist through 2030.
Gaming and Robotics: New Topics Emerge
Beyond traditional chip collaboration, gaming and robotics are emerging topics for this visit.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Jensen Huang is expected to meet with NC Corp. CEO Kim Taek-jin on Sunday to discuss cooperation in gaming and AI.
He also plans to meet with Krafton Executive Director Chang Byung-gyu and company executives, with talks expected to cover Nvidia RTX Spark—a semiconductor product for high-end Windows laptops—and game collaborations in the physical AI field. Earlier this year, Krafton established the robotics company Ludo Robotics.
Reuters quoted Seung-yub Lee, Fund Manager at Seoul Quad Investment Management, as saying that Korean companies operate many high-end factories requiring large quantities of such chips. Huang also made it clear in Taipei that robotics is among his intended investment directions in Korea, given Korea’s manufacturing strength and demographic constraints.
The frequent visits are underpinned by a deepening strategic interdependence between Nvidia and Korea. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together produce about 70% of the global memory needed for AI chips, making them indispensable upstream suppliers for Nvidia. Meanwhile, Korea is also a major market; Nvidia announced last October it would supply over 260,000 of its most advanced AI chips to the Korean government and key enterprises.
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