Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won reaffirmed their longstanding business friendship in a separate meeting following the APEC CEO Summit in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, on Friday, as the two leaders exchanged high-profile gifts and discussed next-generation AI collaborations.
Chey, who was unable to attend the previous day’s high-profile"chimaek" gathering — a casual fried chicken and beer dinner with other top Korean conglomerate heads — met with Huang one-on-one after the summit to deepen bilateral ties between SK and the US chip giant.
Huang presented Chey with the same exclusive gifts he had given Samsung Electronics Chair Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun a day earlier: a bottle of Japan’s Hakushu 25-year-old single malt whisky and Nvidia’s DGX AI system, a high-performance computing platform.
As with the previous recipients, Huang inscribed the whisky label with a note reading, “To our partnership and the future of the world!”
In return, Chey gifted Huang a semiconductor wafer produced by SK hynix, engraved with the phrase: “The world's best HBM4 product by SK hynix.” HBM4 refers to the company’s cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory technology, considered critical in next-generation AI computing.
Accepting the wafer, Huang quipped with a smile, “The wafer is so expensive, so heavy. Now I need maybe several hundred million more,” drawing laughter from those present.
During the meeting, Huang revealed that the two leaders had discussed Nvidia’s Omniverse digital twin technology and its potential application in SK’s future semiconductor fabrication facilities.
"We talked about Nvidia's Omniverse digital twin technology for their next-generation fabs — because Tony's fabs, SK’s fabs, are the most advanced fabs in the world," said Huang.
“The technology is incredibly complex. And in the future, it will be highly automated and highly driven by AI. In order to create that AI for the factory, you have to do it in a digital twin." Tony is Chey's English name.
On the same day, SK Group announced that it is partnering with Nvidia to build a large-scale AI factory, equipped with over 50,000 of Nvidia’s GPUs, marking a major step in the group's digital transformation ambitions.
Utilizing Nvidia Omniverse, a real-time 3D simulation and collaboration platform, SK aims to develop a “manufacturing AI cloud” to bolster competitiveness in the smart manufacturing space and foster a robust startup ecosystem focused on AI innovation.
SK hynix, a key affiliate and global leader in memory chips, will apply digital twin technology across its semiconductor production lines to build precise virtual replicas of real-world processes, enabling smarter and more predictive manufacturing.
SK Telecom also signed a memorandum of understanding with Nvidia to co-develop AI-driven network technologies, including AI-RAN, a foundational architecture for sixth-generation mobile communications.
