Nvidia signed artificial intelligence agreements with SK Telecom, chip startup Rebellions and Kakao Mobility at its AI Day event in Seoul on Monday, days after completing a $1 billion purchase of a 4.13% stake in Naver, the country's largest internet portal.

The deals widen the U.S. chipmaker's reach in South Korea beyond memory chips into data centers, software and self-driving cars. They also arrive as a U.S. congressional inquiry into Chief Executive Jensen Huang has led investors in Seoul to ask how exposed Korean companies are to a single customer. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are both major suppliers of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in Nvidia's AI accelerators.

Nvidia's Naver stake and SK Telecom data center pact

Naver said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it had issued more than 6.5 million new shares to Nvidia through a private placement and received 1.3 trillion won in proceeds, Yonhap News Agency reported. The investment is meant to speed up the AI factory venture the two companies announced in June. Naver plans to build GPU-based infrastructure, starting at its Gak Sejong data center, to expand its GPU-as-a-service business. The portal operator has separately lined up Brookfield for a $9 billion AI data center project.

On Monday, Nvidia, SK Telecom and Rebellions signed a three-way memorandum of understanding to build what they call a heterogeneous computing system. SK Telecom's AI data centers would link Nvidia's graphics processing units with neural processing units designed by Rebellions, a Korean AI chip startup. The arrangement uses Nvidia's NVLink Fusion program, which lets cloud operators and custom chip designers plug their own processors into Nvidia's rack-scale systems.

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT backed the agreement and said it expected the tie-up to open more uses for domestically designed chips and help local companies reach global markets, according to Yonhap.

Kakao Mobility, the ride-hailing affiliate of Kakao Corp., signed a separate agreement with Nvidia to develop a Level 4 autonomous driving system. Kakao said it would combine its own driving AI models with Nvidia's computing platform and use Nvidia Halos, the chipmaker's safety system, to develop and test the technology. According to Yonhap, the work will initially focus on purpose-built vehicles from Kia.

Nvidia also said at the event that it would invest in Korean AI startup Point2 Technology and make further investments in Motif Technologies, RLWRLD and Upstage. It held a forum with more than 20 Korean startups working on foundation models, physical AI, infrastructure and chips.

Huang inquiry raises questions for Samsung and SK hynix

The Seoul event took place under a cloud. Three Republican congressional committee leaders asked Huang last week to sit for a closed-door briefing about his alleged relationship with a businesswoman reportedly identified as a Chinese intelligence asset, and Nvidia's board then opened an internal investigation, Yonhap reported. Capital Times covered the board's decision to open the probe earlier.

Madison Huang, a senior director at Nvidia and the chief executive's daughter, canceled her planned attendance at AI Day, citing family reasons. She had been due to meet Korean executives and officials. Nvidia representatives in Seoul declined to say whether pressure from Congress could affect its partnerships with Samsung and SK hynix, or delivery of the 260,000 GPUs it has pledged to South Korea.

Officials in Seoul played down the risk. Ryu Je-myung, second vice minister of science and ICT, told a parliamentary budget committee on Monday that Nvidia's GPU shipments were expected to proceed as scheduled. "We expect the contracted shipments to proceed without disruption," he said.

Yonhap reported no sign so far that the controversy has disrupted Nvidia's supplies or major projects in the country. The concern for the memory makers is indirect: tighter U.S. scrutiny of chip supply chains with links to China, or changes to Nvidia's product road map, could complicate their production and investment plans, according to the agency.

Chip stocks shrug off Nvidia uncertainty

Investors in Korean chipmakers were not deterred this week. Samsung Electronics rose 3.57% to 206,000 won on Wednesday and SK hynix gained 5.36%, helping the benchmark KOSPI close up 2.6% at 5,375.36, according to Yonhap. The index had climbed 4.39% on Tuesday. Foreign investors bought a net 655.26 billion won of Korean shares on Wednesday.

The government's message is that the relationship matters more than the headlines. Lee Do-kyu, a senior science ministry official, told the AI Day audience that Seoul hopes Korean companies will find ways to work with Nvidia and expand into global markets together.

The next markers for Seoul are whether Huang agrees to the House briefing and whether any of the 260,000 promised GPUs slip from their delivery schedule.