The two-day Nvidia AI Day Seoul began hours after Huang acknowledged an extramarital affair as the company launched an independent investigation into reports that he had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort.
Madison Huang, Nvidia's senior director of Omniverse and robotics product marketing, cancelled her trip on November 7, a day before her scheduled arrival. Nvidia cited unavoidable circumstances. Her planned meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon was also cancelled, while other executives stepped in for partnership events.
Unsurprisingly, organizers took no audience questions at the opening plenary and offered no explanation.
Onstage, executives focused on Korean partnerships, robotics and the increasingly urgent challenge of running more AI systems on limited electricity. Beyond the keynotes, certification exams, an AI terminology quiz and hands-on demonstrations awaited the roughly 2,000 people Nvidia had expected.
The business program continued against an uncomfortable backdrop for a company whose founder has become a celebrity in South Korea.
Huang's visits draw crowds, while his public encounters with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won have made him a familiar face well beyond the technology industry. His personal diplomacy has accompanied some of Korea's largest AI infrastructure commitments.
The investigation now puts that highly visible leadership under scrutiny.
"I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did," Huang wrote in a memo to employees Sunday.
He said he supported the board's investigation and would cooperate. Nvidia's board said it had no reason to believe company secrets or U.S. national security had been compromised and expressed confidence in Huang and his leadership team.
The inquiry follows reports concerning Huang's relationship with a businesswoman whom U.S. officials suspect of gathering information for China. Chinese state media rejected the espionage allegations.
The episode has also drawn attention to the overlap between Huang's family and the company he co-founded. His daughter Madison, son Spencer and son-in-law Nico Caprez all work at Nvidia, whose management remains closely associated with its founder.
For South Korea, the relationship extends deep into plans for national computing infrastructure, manufacturing and research.
At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju in October 2025, Nvidia announced plans with the Korean government and major companies to deploy more than 260,000 graphics processing units (GPUs).
Nvidia and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) subsequently announced a joint AI research laboratory in July under a collaboration valued at $300 million over an initial five years, including substantial computing contributions.
Those Korean connections remained central to Monday's presentations.
Deepu Talla, Nvidia's vice president of robotics and edge AI, highlighted work with Hyundai Motor Group and LG Electronics on digital twins — virtual representations used to simulate factories and their operations.
Jonathan Cohen, vice president of applied research, said all three remaining teams in the science ministry's project to develop a homegrown Korean AI model draw on Nvidia's open Nemotron datasets.
By the final session, electricity had become the dominant theme.
"Generating as many tokens as possible within the power limit we are given is a do-or-die goal," said Chung Ku-hyung, who leads Nvidia's solutions architect team in Korea.
Tokens are the units of information AI models process and generate. Producing more of them within a fixed electricity budget has become an important measure of infrastructure efficiency.
One Nvidia cloud partner accommodated about 37 percent more GPUs within the same power budget and increased token output by about 50 percent, he said.
Jesse Clayton, Nvidia's principal product marketing manager for AI infrastructure, made a separate pitch to custom chip designers through NVLink Fusion, which allows their processors to integrate with Nvidia's infrastructure.
Building the surrounding systems independently "can add a billion or more and a year or more to deployment costs and schedules," he said.
On the exhibition floor, the demonstrations brought the technology down to a more approachable scale.
At the Build-A-Claw booth, a rabbit-like cartoon agent wrote a simple ping-pong game on command. It ran entirely on an MSI RTX Spark laptop equipped with 128 gigabytes of memory.
Nearby, LG Electronics' CLOiD, a wheeled home humanoid unveiled at CES in January, made heart shapes for passers-by.
Near the hall, another familiar figure was available for photographs.
"Toy Jensen," an AI-rendered cartoon of Nvidia's chief executive, invited visitors to pose against backdrops of N Seoul Tower or COEX, beaming beside them.
AJP Takeaways
- NVIDIA AI Day Seoul 2026 opened at COEX in Seoul on Nov. 9, 2026, after Madison Huang, Nvidia’s senior director of Omniverse and robotics product marketing, cancelled her trip on Nov. 7 and a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon was called off.
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang acknowledged infidelity in a memo to employees on Nov. 8, 2026 (U.S. time), after the Financial Times and The New York Times reported that U.S. officials believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation.
- Nvidia said its DSX MaxLPS software lets operators run up to 40 percent more GPUs within the same power budget. South Korea plans to add more than 260,000 Nvidia GPUs, according to Nvidia.
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