Jensen Huang returns to Seoul's Kkanboo Chicken for second meetup — this time with SK Group's Chey Tae-won

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is returning to a Seoul fried chicken restaurant for the second time in eight months.

Huang is scheduled to meet SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and senior SK Group executives at Kkanboo Chicken's Samseong branch in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, at around 7 p.m. Sunday, according to industry sources.

The restaurant is the same venue where Huang held what became known as the "Kkanboo meetup" during his visit to South Korea last October, dining with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung.

The second Kkanboo meetup was arranged at Nvidia's request, and Nvidia also proposed the Samseong branch as the venue, sources said.

Sunday's gathering will mark the seventh publicly known meeting between Huang and Chey in roughly seven months since the two met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju last October — a count that includes Friday's samgyeopsal-and-soju dinner near Hongik University entrance.

Joining the meeting will be SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung, SK Hynix AI Infrastructure President Kim Ju-sun, SK Telecom CEO Jeong Jae-heon and SK Telecom AI CIC head and Chief Technology Officer Jeong Seok-geun.

Industry watchers expect the group to discuss key areas of cooperation, including HBM, AI semiconductors, data center infrastructure and physical AI.

SK Hynix maintains a close partnership with Nvidia across the memory chip supply chain, including HBM. SK Hynix's sixth-generation HBM4 is also set to be included in Nvidia's next-generation AI accelerator, Vera Rubin.

Huang made a surprise visit to the SK Hynix booth at Computex 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 2, where he left a handwritten note reading "Make more" — a reference to HBM.

On Friday near Hongik University entrance, as Chey handed out snacks shaped like HBM chips — a product inspired by SK Hynix's HBM — Huang quipped, "Those HBM chips are mine, but SK says it has no HBM inventory."

The remark was widely read as a half-joking, half-serious appeal to SK Hynix to ramp up HBM supply amid a shortage of memory chips driven by surging AI-related demand.

Nvidia is also a close partner of SK Telecom in digital twin technology, a core component of physical AI.

At the keynote of his annual GTC Taipei AI conference on June 1, Huang highlighted SK Telecom's digital twin technology, which uses Nvidia's Omniverse platform in semiconductor manufacturing processes. It was the second time Huang had spotlighted SK Telecom's digital twin work, following his remarks at GTC 2026 in San Jose in March.

Huang visited South Korea last October for the first time in 15 years since 2010.

At Kkanboo Chicken, he shared a "somaek" — a mix of soju and beer — love shot with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung, forging what they called an "AI Kkanboo" bond.

The three clinked glasses over bomb shots prepared by onlookers, laughing and chatting as they bonded in the cool autumn evening.

When asked whether he knew what "kkanboo" meant, Huang said, "I really love chicken and I love beer. I especially love enjoying chicken and beer with friends. So I think Kkanboo is the perfect place for exactly that kind of gathering."

Huang stepped outside to greet the crowd of journalists and members of the public who had gathered, freely posing for photos with fans who cheered for him.

He also personally carried a large box and handed out gifts he had brought in advance, including kimbap and banana milk.

At one point, Lee remarked, "I think it's been about 10 years since I last had chimaek," to which Chung replied, "I eat it all the time."

Huang told Lee and Chung at the time, "Today is the best day of my life."

When Huang asked the crowd whether anyone had ever seen Lee and Chung eat chicken together, Chung said, "This is the first time the two of us have eaten chicken together. We're doing it thanks to CEO Huang."

When Chung proposed a somaek toast, Huang raised his glass with patrons at a neighboring table, shouted "Cheers!" and drained it in one go, repeatedly exclaiming, "So good!"

Before the roughly hour-long gathering wrapped up, the three linked arms for a love shot, with Lee saying, "Delicious."

As for who would pick up the tab for three of the world's most prominent business figures, the answer turned out to be Lee.

Lee said he would cover the entire bill, but the crowd chanted Huang's name instead.

Huang responded, "These guys have a lot of money," while Lee said, "Eat plenty, everyone," and Chung added, "I'll pay for the second round."

Huang then rang the restaurant's "golden bell" — a tradition signaling that all customers eat for free — declaring that everything was on the house.

Lee ultimately paid the bill, which came to 2 million won (about $1,310). Customers who unexpectedly got free chicken and beer thanks to the impromptu golden bell left the restaurant smiling, saying they had gotten lucky.

Huang has become an icon of the AI era, dominating the global GPU market that underpins AI inference and computing and helping drive the worldwide shift toward artificial intelligence.

치킨 이어 냉면…‘3번째 만남’ 젠슨 황·정의선, 자율주행·로봇 동맹 넓힌다

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