South Korea confirmed that the departure of Jensen Huang from Nvidia will not disrupt plans to deliver 260,000 advanced graphics processors to domestic technology companies. The Ministry of Science and ICT held immediate discussions with Nvidia leadership to ensure hardware deliveries and joint computing projects stay on schedule. But SpaceX CEO Elon Musk warned publicly that several key Nvidia agreements relied on personal handshakes rather than formal paperwork.
The Korea Times reported that state officials met with Nvidia representatives right after Huang vacated his position. Deputy Prime Minister and Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon stated that the hardware allocations negotiated during Huang’s previous visit remain fully active.
Nvidia reaffirmed that it will proceed with the supply of 260,000 GPUs and continue cooperation with Korean enterprises as planned.
The shipment splits 260,000 total processors among major domestic players. Samsung Electronics takes 50,000 units, SK Group receives 50,000, Hyundai Motor Group secures 50,000, and the South Korean government retains 50,000. Naver Cloud claims the remaining 60,000 units. South Korea currently holds compute capacity equal to 21,000 Nvidia B200 processors, with the rest of the allocation scheduled to arrive before early 2027.
Industry collaboration plans extend beyond simple chip shipments to include connecting domestic processors to Nvidia software stacks using NVLink, constructing artificial intelligence facilities, and organizing an official GTC developer event locally. However, Elon Musk voiced concern on X regarding how those commitments were established.
Jensen is incredible at supply chain, but a lot of deals were handshakes with him, not written contracts. Without Jensen, some critical deals may fall apart.
Musk clarified that Huang consistently honored his word during his tenure. Even so, semiconductor analysts caution that domestic firms must now audit existing paperwork to guarantee these verbal pledges turn into actual physical deliveries without Huang directing company operations.
