Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won met once again over chicken and beer in Samseong-dong, south of Seoul. The two leaders met for the second time within two days, demonstrating their growing closeness in the field of artificial intelligence.
The meeting took place at a time when Nvidia and SK Group are expanding their collaboration on AI chips, high-bandwidth memory, and next-generation telecom networks. The pair arrived at the restaurant around 6:50 PM and immediately greeted each other with a handshake and toast.
The Meeting Revisited the Same Venue
The restaurant was not unfamiliar to Huang. Last October, during his visit to South Korea, he met there with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chairman Chung Euisun. That dinner quickly became known as the "Kkanbu summit."
Chey Tae-won was not part of that meeting but had separately met Huang in Gyeongju while chairing the APEC CEO Summit.
Second Meeting Occurred Within Two Days
The dinner on Sunday evening followed a meeting Huang and Chey held two days earlier near Hongik University Station in Seoul at a pork restaurant. Local media dubbed this meeting "samso," a blend of the words samgyeopsal (pork belly) and soju.
According to publicly known meetings, Huang and Chey have met seven times since the APEC CEO Summit in October last year. This pattern indicates increasingly frequent contacts between the two sides in recent months.
Senior SK Executives Also Present
Several senior executives from SK also attended the dinner. These included SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung, Kim Ju-seon, head of the company’s AI infrastructure, SK Telecom CEO Jung Jai-hun, and Chung Suk-geun, CTO of AI Company-in-Company within SK Telecom.
Huang was accompanied by his wife Lori Huang and his eldest daughter Madison Huang, Nvidia’s senior product marketing director responsible for Omniverse and robotics.
The Gathering Was More Social Than Business
After the meeting, Kwak Noh-Jung said the atmosphere was not a formal business meeting. He mentioned they had a light conversation, including discussing which chicken dish was tastier.
SK Telecom Chairman Jung Jai-hun also described the talk as casual and said they touched on various entertaining topics. When asked why senior executives attended, Chey Tae-won explained that this is always the case for them and that the meeting happened coincidentally while Huang was in South Korea.
Huang Hints at Upcoming Announcements
When asked what he discussed with Huang, Chey smiled and said Huang was busy signing documents at the time and that the main conversation would happen later. Regarding the question about being left out of last year’s Kkanbu summit, Chey said Huang was the disappointed party.
Huang hinted that new announcements related to SK Group might be coming soon. He said they are working across many areas, from AI supercomputers and processors to new computers and robotics technologies. Huang also noted that his meeting with SK Telecom executives reflects the growing role of AI in telecommunications.
