Why Jensen Huang is going on a charm offensive in South Korea

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's celebrity-style tour of South Korea reflects the country's growing importance to Nvidia's future. I-Hwa Cheng/AFP/Getty Images Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is visiting South Korea, highlighting the country's clout in the AI boom. Nvidia's reliance on Samsung and SK Hynix has helped lift South Korea's AI champions. Huang is making the rounds in Seoul, from boardrooms to a TV talk show. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's travel itinerary is becoming a guide to the biggest winners in AI. His latest stop: South Korea. The Nvidia chief was expected to arrive in Seoul on Friday for his second visit in seven months, a sign of how central the country has become to the AI boom. The celebrity-style schedule follows Huang's appearance at Computex in Taiwan, the global hub of advanced chip manufacturing. It also reflects a growing reality for Nvidia. "Nvidia's dependence on Korea has deepened," Jeff Kim, an analyst at KB Securities, wrote in a note this week. As one of the world's largest producers of memory chips, South Korea has emerged as a major beneficiary of the AI boom. In May, the country's semiconductor exports surged nearly 170% to a record high, helping drive South Korea's strongest export growth in more than four decades. The country's chip champions have also helped fuel a red-hot stock-market rally. South Korea's benchmark Kospi stock index has nearly doubled this year, while Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each topped $1 trillion in market value last month on the AI rush. But Huang's trip to South Korea isn't just about memory chips. At Computex earlier this week, Huang highlighted robotics as a major area for future cooperation with South Korea. As Nvidia increasingly looks for manufacturing partners that can help commercialize AI applications, "Korea, which has developed large-scale manufacturing infrastructure, is emerging as an ideal testbed," wrote Kim. Huang's latest trip will be closely watched by investors. A website tracking his expected itinerary in South Korea has already attracted over 90,000 views as of Friday afternoon, local time. Earlier this week, shares of LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics jumped on reports that the Nvidia chief was headed to South Korea. During his last trip to Seoul in October, Huang was photographed eating fried chicken and beer with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Executive Chair Chung Euisun. The meeting generated a wave of media coverage and helped send shares of several Korean fried chicken chains soaring by as much as 30%. Read the original article on Business Insider