Jensen Huang, the Nvidia chief executive, and the leaders of Samsung and Hyundai staged a regular-folks outing in Seoul before announcing a business deal.
Nvidia, Samsung, Hyundai Leaders Share Fried Chicken and Beer
Fried chicken and beer is a combination that families, office workers and blue-collar laborers in South Korea love to share after a hard day at work. Billionaire tech magnates are not often mingling among them.
But hundreds of spectators and news cameras swarmed the area outside an everyday fried chicken restaurant in Seoul’s Gangnam district on Thursday to get a glimpse of the three: Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang; Samsung Electronics’ executive chairman, Lee Jae-yong; and Hyundai Motor Group’s executive chairman, Euisun Chung.
At the table, the trio, all celebrities in the business world, exchanged hugs, clinked glasses and linked their drinking arms to take shots of beer.
The chicken wings were “so good,” Mr. Huang said at the restaurant, where he referred to his seatmates casually as Jay, Mr. Lee’s English name, and E.S., short for Mr. Chung’s given name.
Their rare casual outing — which appeared staged for the public’s eye, as they sat down at a table by the windows facing the street — was especially unusual in South Korea, where top executives of conglomerates keep high standards of decorum and privacy. It signaled the deepened ties between Nvidia, an American chipmaker, with South Korea’s tech and auto industries.
Later, they appeared together at an Nvidia gamer festival nearby, where Mr. Huang suggested that a business deal between them would soon be announced.