By Ben Blanchard and Wen-Yee Lee
TAIPEI, June 1 (Reuters) – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hosted top South Korean tech executives including the boss of chipmaker SK Hynix at a boisterous dinner on Monday, as he looks to deepen ties with key partners ahead of what he called an “incredibly busy” stretch for the AI boom.
SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung, executives from Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Naver were among those at the “Korean Partner Night”, held at a traditional Taiwanese restaurant in Taipei on the sidelines of the Computex trade show.
“I want to go congratulate them, thank them, and also prepare for the second half of this year. It’s going to be very busy and next year is going to be incredibly busy,” Huang told reporters.
“Korea is a critical part of our ecosystem.”
Huang went from table to table toasting guests to chants of “Jensen, Jensen!” as dozens of fans and reporters waited outside, briefly bringing traffic to a standstill when he arrived.
Huang typically holds such dinners for Taiwanese suppliers like chipmaker TSMC when he is in town, but Monday’s event was the first dedicated to Korean partners during his Taipei visit.
Shares in Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and other South Korean technology firms rallied on Monday as investors bet the expected meetings between the U.S. chipmaker and South Korean executives at Computex would lead to new partnerships in AI and robotics.
Huang said he would go to South Korea next, likely on Friday, after an almost two-week trip to Taiwan, where he was born and has rockstar status.
“We always consider investments in Korea,” he said, after a dinner of fried oysters, radish omelette and clams, washed down with Taiwan Beer and Korean soju.
“Really smart companies. Very technical.”
He said he hoped to be able to “contribute to robotics in Korea”, but declined to say whether he would meet with Samsung and SK Hynix in Seoul.
South Korea has emerged as one of Nvidia’s key markets.
Last year, Nvidia said it would supply more than 260,000 of its most advanced AI chips to South Korea’s government and some of the country’s largest companies, including Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group, as the country pushes to strengthen its AI computing capabilities.
(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee and Ben Blanchard, and Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Editing by Josephine Mason)
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