SK Chief, Nvidia’s CEO Discuss Ways to Deepen AI Efforts

(Bloomberg) — The chairman of SK Hynix Inc.’s parent and Nvidia Corp. co-founder Jensen Huang met Wednesday to discuss AI, suggesting the two companies ar

(Bloomberg) — The chairman of SK Hynix Inc.’s parent and Nvidia Corp. co-founder Jensen Huang met Wednesday to discuss AI, suggesting the two companies are exploring ways to deepen one of the most important relationships in artificial intelligence hardware.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Huang talked about areas including moving artificial intelligence into the physical realm. Both leaders discussed SK Hynix’s high-bandwidth memory chips, which work with Nvidia’s AI accelerators. The Korean company has been quickening its pace of development to make sure it keeps up with Nvidia’s demands for faster evolution, Chey told reporters at CES in Las Vegas.

SK Hynix’s shares surged more than 5% in Seoul, extending a remarkable gain that made the Korean memory chip maker one of the industry’s best performers of 2024. It became the leading provider of essential memory to Nvidia during the post-ChatGPT AI boom, pushing aside longtime rival Samsung Electronics Co.

Huang has discussed extending AI into more of the physical world to develop tools that can “proceed, reason, plan and act.” That will transform industries worth $50 trillion, according to Nvidia. Chey said he told Huang at their meeting that South Korea, a manufacturing powerhouse, is uniquely positioned to work with Nvidia on that front.

Both companies have benefited from the insatiable appetite that major companies and governments have for Nvidia’s chips, the gold standard for training AI algorithms.