Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is visiting Korea, is pursuing a meeting with world-renowned professional gamer "Faker" (Lee Sang-hyeok). He is also set to hold a series of meetings with the heads of major game makers including Krafton and NCsoft, broadening his points of contact with the domestic gaming industry on all fronts.
According to the information technology (IT) industry on Thursday, Nvidia is closely coordinating detailed scheduling for a meeting between CEO Huang and Faker, a player belonging to the professional gaming club T1. Faker is regarded as a global e-sports icon who holds the record for the most "League of Legends (LoL) World Championship" titles.
Huang, who has long shown deep interest in Korea's gaming industry and e-sports, has not hidden his strong "fandom" for Faker. During his visit to Korea last November, he attended the "Nvidia GeForce Gamer Festival" held in Seoul and drew attention by chanting Faker's name three times on stage. Then in April this year, he surprised the entire T1 roster, including Faker, with a gift of uniforms bearing his own handwritten signature.
Huang's attachment to the Korean gaming market also runs parallel to Nvidia's growth history. After founding Nvidia in 1993, he became famous for personally visiting the Yongsan Electronics Market, then the largest source of graphics card demand, every time he came to Korea until the 2000s. This is also the background behind Huang's praise on official occasions that "without Korea's PC bang culture and e-sports, today's Nvidia would not exist."
In this visit to Korea, Huang will expand technological cooperation with domestic game makers beyond simple cultural exchange. He plans to meet successively with game company heads including NCsoft CEO Kim Taek-jin and Krafton Chairman Chang Byung-gyu to build a "strategic technology alliance" for preempting the next-generation AI PC platform and expanding the robotics ecosystem.
First, Huang will hold a surprise meeting with CEO Kim Taek-jin at an undisclosed location in Seoul on the 7th. The two companies have maintained a tight partnership in the fields of game development and graphics optimization since the early 2000s.
The subsequent meeting with Krafton will bring together Krafton's core AI and global development executives, including Chairman Chang Byung-gyu, Chief AI Officer (CAIO) Lee Kang-wook, and Jang Tae-seok, head of the "PUBG: Battlegrounds" intellectual property (IP) franchise. The specific meeting schedule and location with Krafton are currently in final coordination.
The key agenda of this series of meetings is a cooperation plan based on the next-generation AI PC platform "RTX Spark," which Nvidia is pouring its full efforts into. RTX Spark is an ambitious product equipped with the "N1 X," a central processing unit (CPU)-graphics processing unit (GPU) integrated chipset jointly developed by Nvidia in partnership with MediaTek. Its feature is implementing high-spec gameplay and high-performance on-device generative AI functions in a single chip. As Krafton and NCsoft, along with major global game makers, have already been listed as official RTX Spark partners, advanced business cooperation plans such as exclusive game optimization are expected to emerge through these top-level meetings.
At the same time, cooperation plans in the humanoid robot field based on "physical AI," which Huang has identified as a future growth engine, are also expected to be discussed in depth. In particular, NCsoft is staking its future on entering new AI industries based on physical environments such as robotics and world models, led by its own AI-specialized subsidiary "NC AI." As Huang has pledged physical AI cooperation with Korea's manufacturing and factory infrastructure during this visit to Korea, observers say related technology partnerships and alliance building will begin in earnest.
