South Korea says Nvidia issues won't affect contracted GPU supplies

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South Korea expects its contracted deliveries of Nvidia graphics processing units to proceed without disruption despite the controversy surrounding the chipmaker's chief executive, the country's deputy science minister said on Monday. Vice Minister of Science and ICT Ryu Jemyung told a parliamentary budget committee that previously contracted supplies for South Korea's AI computing plans remain on track.

Ryu said 10,000 GPUs funded under a 2025 supplementary budget had already arrived and were in use, and that GPUs planned for 2026 were under contract and expected to enter service this year. He added that the ministry was closely monitoring developments and discussing prices and schedules with Nvidia Korea. His words were: "We expect production and the delivery schedule for contracted volumes to proceed without disruption."

The reassurance follows a difficult weekend for Nvidia. The company's board said on Sunday it had opened an independent investigation after reports that chief executive Jensen Huang had been targeted by a Chinese intelligence effort through his relationship with businesswoman Alice Huang. The board said it had no reason to believe US national security or Nvidia secrets had been compromised, and Huang said he would cooperate fully.

Ryu's assurance was given on the record to a parliamentary committee and is reported by Reuters, which also reports the board's statement and Huang's pledge to cooperate. The delivery figures he cited, 10,000 GPUs already in use and the 2026 volumes under contract, come from the minister himself, and no independent count of the installed hardware has been published. Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, so the company's own view of the delivery schedule could not be confirmed, and whether the contracted volumes actually arrive on time will only be shown by the deliveries themselves.

The episode has already had visible effects in Seoul even as the hardware pipeline holds. News of the controversy coincided with the cancellation of a visit to South Korea by Huang's daughter Madison Huang, an Nvidia senior director. South Korean AI startup Rebellions said her planned visit to its headquarters and a partner dinner were cancelled because of unavoidable internal circumstances at Nvidia, and Kakao Mobility cancelled a photo session and question-and-answer event with her, while saying a business agreement with Nvidia would proceed with senior director Gaurav Agarwal attending instead.

For South Korea, the stakes are practical rather than political. The country is building out national AI computing capacity, and the GPUs at issue are the hardware that capacity runs on. A minister's assurance calms the immediate worry, but the test now is whether the 2026 deliveries land on the schedule Ryu described, with the ministry's talks with Nvidia Korea the place to watch. Nvidia AI Day Seoul, a two-day event expected to draw about 2,000 participants to discuss physical AI, agentic AI and infrastructure, was proceeding as planned, according to South Korean media.