Key points
- Korea expects contracted Nvidia GPUs to arrive on schedule
- A vice minister says 10,000 GPUs bought last year have arrived
- Nvidia's Korean partners announced new deals after the probe began
South Korea expects its contracted Nvidia (NVDA) GPUs to arrive on schedule despite an investigation involving chief executive Jensen Huang, a senior government official said on November 9.
"We expect production and delivery for the volumes already under contract to go ahead without disruption," Ryu Je-myung, the second vice minister of science and ICT, told a National Assembly budget committee meeting, Seoul Finance (서울파이낸스) reported.
Ryu said the 10,000 GPUs Korea bought with last year's supplementary budget are already in the country, and chips contracted for this year are arriving in stages, JoongAng Economy News (중앙이코노미뉴스) reported. The ministry is also discussing equipment prices and delivery schedules with Nvidia's Korea office. The reports don't say which volumes those talks cover.
Ryu spoke a day after Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. Huang told employees the same day that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The board said it had no reason to believe national security or Nvidia's secrets were compromised.
We're tracking developments in our Jensen Huang scandal timeline.
Korea's plan calls for 260,000 Nvidia GPUs
Korea's government and its biggest companies announced plans last year to bring in more than 260,000 Nvidia GPUs, the chips that train and run AI models. These are announced plans, and most are stated as minimums. The government, Samsung Electronics (005930), and SK Group each plan more than 50,000. Hyundai Motor Group plans 50,000, and Naver Cloud plans more than 60,000, FETV reported. The four companies' plans add up to at least 210,000 chips, and they haven't published schedules for bringing them in. The government's plan takes the total above 260,000.
Nvidia is now a Naver shareholder, too. On November 6, it paid $1 billion for new shares of Naver (035420), which gives it about 4.1% of the company.
Huang met Korea's chairmen over pork belly and chicken
On June 5, Huang had pork belly and soju near Hongik University in Seoul with SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, LG Group chairman Koo Kwang-mo, and Naver chairman Lee Hae-jin, Financial News (파이낸셜뉴스) reported. Seven months earlier, he ate fried chicken in Seoul's Samseong-dong with Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group chairman Chung Eui-sun.
"Worrying that contracts already being carried out, or even GPU deliveries, could be disrupted is going too far," one industry official said. "But if Huang steps down, there could be more uncertainty about future cooperation and follow-up projects," the official continued.
Huang has led Nvidia since he co-founded it in 1993. More than 60 executives report directly to him, and Nvidia hasn't publicly disclosed a formal succession plan or named a successor.
Nvidia's Seoul event went ahead
Nvidia held its AI Day Seoul event on November 9, the day after the board's announcement. There, SK Telecom (017670), the Korean chip startup Rebellions, and Nvidia agreed to develop AI systems that connect Nvidia GPUs with Rebellions' NPUs, or neural processing units, chips designed for AI work. The link uses Nvidia's NVLink Fusion technology, and SK Telecom plans to test the system in its own AI data center.
The same day, Kakao Mobility signed an agreement with Nvidia on Level 4 self-driving, where the car drives itself within set conditions. It plans to use Nvidia's DRIVE AGX Thor computers, first in Kia's purpose-built vehicles.
One planned visitor didn't come. Madison Huang, Jensen Huang's daughter and a senior director at Nvidia, canceled her trip to Korea. Her schedule had included a meeting with the Ministry of Science and ICT, a visit to Rebellions, and a Kakao Mobility event. No direct link to the investigation has been confirmed.
Samsung and SK Hynix make the memory inside Nvidia's chips
Samsung and SK Hynix (000660) supply the high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, that's packed next to the processor in Nvidia's AI chips.
"For HBM and substrate suppliers, what matters is whether orders and production plans change. For companies bringing in GPUs, it's whether deliveries and export license conditions change," another industry official said, MyDaily (마이데일리) reported.
Korean reports also describe an indirect risk. If Washington tightens its rules on AI chip sales to China, that could reach the Korean companies that supply Nvidia.
The two stocks rose on both November 10 and November 11. Samsung closed at 206,000 won ($154) on November 11, up 8.5% over the two sessions, and SK Hynix closed at 1,277,000 won ($957), up 12.4%, by our calculations. On November 10, the rise came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 6.86% in New York, as we reported.
Meanwhile, the new Naver shares Nvidia bought are scheduled to list on November 27.
Quotes are translated from Korean. Won figures are converted at 1,334.9 won to the dollar, the Naver Finance rate on November 11, 2026.
Cover photo: Peter Dasilva / European Union, 2024, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0, cropped.
