Jensen Huang Signals Long-Term Supply Challenges While Expanding Partnerships in South Korea
SEOUL — Nvidia and South Korea’s SK Group moved to strengthen their strategic partnership on Monday, underscoring the growing importance of advanced memory chips in the global artificial intelligence race.
Ahead of a joint announcement with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang warned that shortages across the semiconductor supply chain are likely to persist for years, as demand from AI data centers continues to outpace manufacturing capacity.
“The entire supply chain — from wafers and advanced packaging to silicon photonics — remains constrained,” Huang said during a visit to Seoul. “Demand is simply enormous.”
The expected agreement highlights South Korea’s increasingly central role in the AI ecosystem. SK Hynix, the world’s leading producer of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, has become one of Nvidia’s most important suppliers for AI accelerators used by companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle.
AI Demand Is Reshaping the Semiconductor Industry
Industry executives and analysts increasingly believe that the current supply imbalance is not temporary. Chey recently said SK Hynix plans to double its wafer capacity over the next five years to meet surging demand from AI applications. Analysts expect tight supplies to continue well into the end of the decade.
The shortage extends beyond memory chips. Advanced packaging technologies, silicon photonics and manufacturing equipment have also emerged as bottlenecks, forcing chipmakers and their suppliers to expand capacity at unprecedented speed.
South Korea Emerges as a Key AI Partner
Huang’s visit follows a series of high-profile meetings with Korean technology leaders. During Computex in Taiwan earlier this month, Nvidia hosted senior executives from SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and Naver, emphasizing Korea’s growing importance to Nvidia’s future AI strategy.
Nvidia recently confirmed that Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron have all qualified to supply next-generation HBM4 memory for its upcoming Vera Rubin AI platform, broadening the company’s supply base while preserving SK Hynix’s dominant position in the market.
A Casual Dinner With Strategic Importance
Before Monday’s announcement, Huang met Chey, SK Hynix Chief Executive Kwak Noh-jung and other SK executives over “chimaek” — the Korean combination of fried chicken and beer — at a Seoul branch of Kkanbu Chicken.
The informal gathering reflected the increasingly close ties between Nvidia and South Korea’s technology champions. Huang told reporters that Nvidia and SK had enjoyed a “very big year” together and were preparing for even stronger growth in the second half of 2026 and beyond.
As governments and companies around the world race to build AI infrastructure, the partnership between Nvidia and South Korea’s memory industry has become one of the defining relationships shaping the future of computing.