This article is by Lee Jae-lim, Sarah Chea and read by an artificial voice.



The heads of Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, and Hyundai Motor gathered at an unlikely spot - an unassuming and slightly rundown chicken joint in southern Seoul in Thursday evening - ahead of anticipated major deals among the companies during Jensen Huang's visit to Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO summit. It is believed the high-profile informal gathering of Huang, Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Executive Chair Euisun Chung was focused on expanding semiconductor supply chains, AI infrastructure and robotics.

As night fell, more than 1,000 people, including reporters, onlookers and company officials had gathered around the small chicken restaurant, prompting police to arrive, set up barricades and manage the swelling crowd. With the swarm of reporters and cameras crowding the area and spilling onto the roadway, even the most oblivious passersby realized that something was brewing as they found their paths blocked.

The location, the well-known Korean fried chicken franchise Kkanbu Chicken, was reportedly handpicked by Huang who wanted to experience the country's famous chimaek (chicken and beer) culture. The Nvidia chief is known to be keen on trying out different local restaurants during his business trips.

The meeting among the U.S. AI chip giant, Korea's leading chipmaker and automaker is seen as a significant step toward strengthening AI cooperation, coming a day before Nvidia's large-scale AI chip supply deals with four major Korean conglomerates - Samsung, SK, Hyundai Motor and Naver - estimated to be worth a few trillion won.



Samsung Electronics is supplying its fifth-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM3E) chips to Nvidia, which was verified by the chipmaker on a conference call on Thursday. Samples of Samsung's next-generation HBM4 chips are also being shipped its to clients. Nvidia-approved HBM4 chips this year could be a watershed moment for the Korean chipmaker to reclaim the top spot in the global HBM market.

"As competition over GPU (GPU) performance intensifies among our client companies, customers are demanding higher-performance HBM4," Samsung said. "We anticipated this market need from the start of our development, and set our performance targets to exceed customer expectations. The samples currently delivered to customers can achieve over 11 gigabits per second while maintaining low power consumption."

The company said it has already secured customer orders for expanded HBM supply next year, but is reviewing options to further boost production capacity to handle extra demand.

SK hynix, another major chipmaker, said during its Wednesday conference call that all of its 2026 memory chip supply has already been sold out, and that it plans to "significantly" increase memory-related capital spending from this year's level. The company added that it will start delivering HBM4 chips to major clients in the fourth quarter.

Hyundai Motor and Nvidia have announced a partnership in January regarding future mobility, with cooperation spanning across multiple domains including software-defined vehicles, robotics, autonomous driving, digital twins, smart manufacturing and infotainment.



Huang is reported to meet separately with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won at Gyeongju on Friday.

Lee and Chung, after meeting Huang in Seoul, will also return to Gyeongju on Friday to attend a dinner scheduled with Chinese President Xi Jinping.