An unexpected meeting between billionaires at the head of an accumulated fortune of 195 billion dollars. On Thursday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared a meal with Lee Jae-yong, president of Samsung Electronics, and Chung Eui-sun, executive chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, at a popular fried chicken and beer restaurant in Seoul, CNN reports.
This meeting between the three leaders, which took place shortly before the opening of the Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit (APEC) in South Korea, has not gone unnoticed. According to the Korean press, nearly 500 people gathered in front of the establishment to ask for autographs and photographs. A game played by Jensen Huang, whose company recently surpassed $5 billion in market capitalization.
“Dinner offered”
During the evening at the Kkanbu Chicken restaurant (“KKanbu” means “close friends” in Korean), the three billionaires were not exactly discreet, clinking glasses while crossing their arms, with a glass of beer in their hands. A gesture called “love shot” supposedly seals friendship in Korean culture.
At around 8 pm, after interacting with several customers, Jensen Huang announced a first “general tour” before Chung Eui-sun did the same. In the end, the billionaires also paid for all the customers’ meals, with Jensen Huang claiming that “dinner is free.” According to the Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper, the total bill amounted to 2.5 million South Korean won, or just over 1,500 euros.
“Friendly alliance in AI”
According to the Korean press, this evening between the three leaders was an opportunity to celebrate the “friendly alliance in AI” established between Nvidia, Samsung and Hyundai. The American chip giant announced this Friday that it will supply 260,000 of its most efficient semiconductors to South Korea.
The Californian firm said it was “working with South Korea to expand the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure with more than a quarter of a million GPUs (graphics processors),” distributed between cloud services (decentralized computing) and factories. In particular, Samsung Electronics is “building a factory equipped with more than 50,000 GPUs to accelerate its digital transformation, chip and artificial intelligence roadmap.”
Conglomerate SK Group, parent company of memory chip maker SK Hynix, and Hyundai Motor will also equip factories with Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, its most sophisticated AI semiconductors.
For the occasion, Jesen Huang gave Chung Eui-sun and Lee Jae-yong a DGX Spark, Nvidia’s supercomputer, as well as a box containing bottles of 25-year-old Hakushu, a Japanese single malt whiskey. Box inside which was a card with the message: “For our association and the future of the world.”
Source: BFM TV
