By Minwoo Park, Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin
SEOUL, June 5 (Reuters) – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Friday said robotics will be South Korea’s next major sector, as he arrived for his second visit in seven months, underscoring deepening ties with local firms in not only chips but also robotics and AI factories.
South Korea is an Asian manufacturing powerhouse – home to major manufacturers of chips, electronics, cars and ships. After landing at Gimpo International Airport on a flight from Taiwan, Huang told reporters that chip manufacturing will be increasingly driven by AI and robotics.
“Because Korea is a manufacturing centre of the world, we can apply the robotics technology, the physical AI technology that we invent here for the industry,” he said. “So we have a great opportunity to partner with the semiconductor companies here as well.”
Huang said he had meetings scheduled with Hyundai Motor, LG, SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics and Naver during his trip.
“Did I bring any gifts for Korea? I brought a lot of business for Korea,” he said. “I have some surprises.”
KOREAN BARBECUE
In his first stop, the Nvidia boss visited an internet cafe in Seoul and met with e-sports players, including gaming superstar Lee Sang-hyeok, known as “Faker.” His daughter Madison Huang accompanied him during the visit, wearing a uniform of the renowned T1 e-sports team.
Huang then had Korean barbecue and drinks in the evening at a restaurant in Seoul with LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin.
“We are all booming,” Huang told the crowd during the dinner, referring to his partners, such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Naver and Hyundai Motor. “My friends here had a very good year, but this is just the beginning,” he said, adding that Nvidia’s new products would use a lot of memory chips.
He handed out bags of chocolate-coated corn chips that were emblazoned with “HBM Chips” – after the high-bandwidth memory produced by SK Hynix for Nvidia’s AI chipsets – prompting the crowd to chant “HBM!”
BASEBALL AND TV TALK SHOW
Huang has said Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron have all been qualified to supply HBM4 chips for its Vera Rubin AI platform. “All three vendors are in production, and they are all racing to support Vera Rubin.”
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix between them make about 70% of the memory chips needed for artificial intelligence chips like the ones Nvidia makes.
“Of course memory is constrained and so we have to be smart about using it in all of our systems,” Huang said, when asked by Reuters about a Semianalysis report that Nvidia would cut the SOCAMM capacity in its Vera Rubin system.
He also said Nvidia had started hiring for its research and development centre in Seoul.
Huang is due to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game and appear on a TV talk show during his trip.
(Reporting by Minwoo Park, Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee, Jack Kim, Cynthia Kim; Editing by Ed Davies and Thomas Derpinghaus, Kirsten Donovan)
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