[Edaily Reporter Ahn Yu-ri] Ahead of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to South Korea, attention from the domestic IT industry and investors is intensifying. With talk of not only a series of meetings with business leaders but also meetings with Naver Board Chairman Lee Hae-jin and NC CEO Kim Taek-jin, stock prices of related companies are fluctuating.

According to the IT industry on the 2nd, a website titled “Jensen Huang KR Tracker” has recently emerged. Created by an individual developer named “Jun,” the site compiles CEO Jensen Huang’s visit schedule, locations, and companies he is scheduled to meet based on media reports, while also displaying the stock price trends of related listed companies.

The emergence of such a site reflects the heightened interest among investors in domestic companies that have collaborative relationships with NVIDIA. As expectations spread in the market that companies visited or met by CEO Jensen Huang could emerge as “beneficiary stocks,” there are also signs of investors moving to buy related stocks in advance.

In fact, “Jensen Huang beneficiary stocks” has emerged as a major related search term on portal sites, and posts analyzing his itinerary and associated companies are flooding online communities and social media platforms.

Stock prices are also reacting sensitively. Naver (#NAVER), which had been trading in a narrow range, has recorded gains for three consecutive trading days. The closing price on the 2nd was 280,500 won, up 3.3% from the previous trading day, and approximately 19% higher than three months ago.

#NC has also seen improved investor sentiment following speculation that CEO Jensen Huang will meet with CEO Kim Taek-jin on the 7th. The closing price on that day was 338,000 won, a sharp 14.38% increase from the previous trading day.

Within the industry, expectations are growing that CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to South Korea will go beyond a simple corporate visit and serve as a catalyst for domestic companies to fully integrate into NVIDIA’s AI ecosystem. Analysts suggest that strengthened cooperation with NVIDIA could lead not only to securing global clients but also to enhanced technological competitiveness and increased corporate value.

In particular, market interest is growing as more companies seek collaboration opportunities with NVIDIA across various sectors, including AI semiconductors, data centers, robotics, gaming, and cloud computing. Consequently, investors are closely monitoring CEO Jensen Huang’s actual itinerary, the outcomes of his meetings, and the details of collaboration discussions, while keeping a close eye on the stock price movements of related companies.

However, LG Group and Doosan Group stocks, which had surged sharply from May 29 through the first day of this month, saw a decline on the second day as profit-taking selling pressure intensified. As of that day, #LG closed at 140,000 won, down 15.56% from the previous day. #Doosan closed at 1,918,000 won, down 12.94% from the previous day.

NVIDIA Eyes Manufacturing Data, Accelerates Collaboration on Korea’s ‘Physical AI’

The collaboration between NVIDIA and Korean companies is expected to develop into a mutually complementary relationship that combines each party’s strengths. Analysts suggest that NVIDIA can secure the abundant industrial data held by Korean companies in the manufacturing, robotics, gaming, and service sectors, while Korean companies can enhance their competitiveness by leveraging NVIDIA’s cutting-edge computing infrastructure and AI development ecosystem.

NVIDIA is establishing itself as a standard platform provider for the AI ecosystem, moving beyond its role as a mere GPU manufacturer. It offers an integrated AI stack that encompasses not only GPUs but also the CUDA development environment, various software development kits (SDKs), AI frameworks, and data center systems. Based on this, the company is rapidly expanding its business scope into future industries such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and robotics.

For domestic companies, joining the NVIDIA ecosystem offers the advantage of securing massive computing resources more reliably. Based on this, it is expected that they will be able to develop high-performance AI services—such as large language models (LLMs), multimodal AI, digital twins, and robotics simulations—more quickly and introduce them to the global market. In particular, the ability to leverage the global customer network and developer ecosystem established by NVIDIA is cited as a key benefit of this collaboration.

Analysts suggest that CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to South Korea is particularly focused on expanding cooperation in “Physical AI,” a field gaining attention as the next-generation AI market. Physical AI is a technology that enables robots, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation equipment to perceive real-world environments and make independent judgments and actions. To implement this, vast amounts of data generated in industrial settings—such as factories, shipyards, and logistics centers—are essential; consequently, South Korea, with its strong manufacturing competitiveness, is considered an attractive partner for NVIDIA.

In fact, the Korean companies with which CEO Hwang is reported to have arranged meetings are also engaged in businesses closely related to Physical AI. LG Group is expanding its smart factory and industrial AI businesses, while Doosan is accelerating efforts to strengthen its capabilities in robotics and industrial automation.

Naver Cloud is continuously expanding its collaboration with NVIDIA in the AI sector. The two companies are working to advance HyperClova X using NVIDIA’s open-source large language model (LLM), Nemotron 3 Ultra, and are also conducting joint research on the optimization of super-large AI models and core technologies. Additionally, they unveiled the “Seoul World Model,” a digital representation of Seoul’s real-world environment built using NVIDIA’s physical AI platform, “Cosmos.” This model is characterized by its precise reproduction of Korea’s actual road environments and spatial structures, achieved by training on domestic map data and 1.2 million panoramic images collected across Seoul.

NC is also preparing to enter the physical AI market, led by its subsidiary NC AI. The company is exploring ways to apply the 3D virtual environment construction technology and AI capabilities accumulated during game development to the robotics and industrial AI sectors.

Experts predict that the value of Korea’s manufacturing data will grow even further in the era of physical AI. Yoon Seok-bin, a special professor at Sogang University’s Graduate School of Information and Communication, stated, “The core of competitiveness in physical AI lies in data accumulated from actual industrial sites,” adding, “Korea possesses world-class data in the manufacturing sector, making it a country of very high collaborative value even from NVIDIA’s perspective.” He continued, “If Korean companies and NVIDIA combine their respective strengths, they can generate significant synergy.”

However, concerns have also been raised that dependence on NVIDIA could become excessive. Professor Yoon noted, “At this point, it is necessary to participate in the global AI ecosystem through cooperation with NVIDIA,” but added, “In the long term, we must also pursue a strategy to develop our own neural processing units (NPUs) and AI infrastructure and secure sovereign AI capabilities.” He further emphasized, “A two-track strategy that balances global cooperation with technological self-reliance is crucial for the sustainable growth of Korea’s AI industry.”