Nvidia CEO's comments move share prices for Samsung, SK, Hyundai

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address at CES in Las Vegas on Jan. 6. (AFP-Yonhap)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address at CES in Las Vegas on Jan. 6. (AFP-Yonhap)

It is fair to say that the star of recently concluded CES 2025 was none other than Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, with every word the tycoon uttered moving stock prices up or down.

His comments on Nvidia’s partners, semiconductors and quantum computing sent ripples through the market, causing fluctuations in the share prices of major industry players, including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Hyundai Motor and firms engaged in quantum computing.

Market watchers say Nvidia’s dominance in artificial intelligence, with a market cap of well over $3 trillion, gives Huang’s words an outsized impact on the industry, akin to the influence once wielded by the late Steve Jobs of Apple or Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway.

Intentional or unintentional slip?

In a highly anticipated keynote speech at CES 2025 on Jan. 6 in Las Vegas, Huang unveiled Nvidia’s much-awaited GeForce RTX 50 series of graphics processing units and announced they would feature GDDR7 memory from Micron Technology. This news led industry watchers to believe Nvidia was exclusively using American Micron products over Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK hynix for its key GPUs, despite Samsung being the first in the industry to develop GDDR7 memory.

The announcement led to a 0.89 percent drop in Samsung’s shares and a 2.4 percent decline in those of SK hynix on Jan. 7, as investors grew concerned that the two Korean chipmakers were lagging behind the US chipmaker or were excluded from Nvidia's latest GPUs.

Adding fuel to the fire, Huang further claimed during a Q&A session, “I think Samsung and SK, they don’t make graphic memory,” when asked why he chose Micron.

Amid the controversy, Huang corrected his remark the next day, releasing a rare statement clarifying that Samsung’s GDDR7, along with various partners, would be used on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 series.

Chae Min-sook, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities, said Huang's remarks on GDDR7 suppliers "seem to be a deliberate statement, conscious of the memory competition landscape."

Others cautioned against reading too much into Huang's statements.

"Global tech giants like Nvidia have such diverse product lineups that come with many parts, which makes it difficult to fully know the details of the suppliers," an industry source said. SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won echoed this sentiment, saying it is possible that Huang may not know every solution used in each product.

Boon for Samsung, SK or Hyundai?

On Jan. 8, Samsung regained its losses, with shares rising 3.43 percent. This increase, which came despite the tech giant releasing disappointing fourth-quarter profit earnings estimates, was largely in response to Huang expressing confidence in Samsung’s technology in high bandwidth memory chips.

Huang told reporters that Samsung needs to redesign its HBM chips, but expressed confidence that “they could do it, and they are working very fast.”

Samsung is still waiting for its HBM chips -- a critical component for the GPUs that power generative AI systems like ChatGPT -- to pass Nvidia’s quality tests. Meanwhile, Samsung’s smaller rival SK hynix is enjoying market dominance in HBM, and is a supplier for Nvidia.

The impact of Huang’s words was also felt by SK Group. Chey said SK hynix’s development pace for HBM has surpassed Nvidia’s requests, while confirming his meeting with Huang earlier in the day on Jan. 8.

On the same day, Chey visited the SK booth at CES and lifted a glass substrate made by SK materials affiliate SKC. He then remarked, “I just sold this.” Chey did not elaborate on which firm the deal was with, but considering he had just met with Huang, market watchers believe it implied a successful deal with Nvidia. SK hynix’s shares increased by 5.29 percent, and SKC’s shares surged 20 percent on Thursday.

The automotive sector also reacted to Huang. On Friday, Hyundai Motor’s stock rose 6 percent following an announcement that it had forged a strategic partnership with Nvidia to integrate AI technologies into its operations.

Quantum computing stocks crushed

Huang’s pessimistic outlook on quantum computing weighed down on the still-nascent industry, as he told Wall Street analysts that practical implementation of quantum computing could take at least 15 to 30 years.

His remarks sent stocks tied to the red-hot sector, which had enjoyed a yearlong rally, tumbling, with Rigetti Computing shedding 40 percent, IonQ plunging 37 percent and D-Wave Quantum sinking more than 30 percent.

It is estimated that his comments wiped away more than $8 billion from the combined market value of the quantum computing firms.

Specifically, IonQ’s stock price fall dealt a devastating hit to many Korean investors, who hold about 37 percent of the company’s shares. On Jan. 7, Korean investors held IonQ stocks worth $3.09 billion, however, after just a day, the value almost halved to $1.87 billion, with investors losing some $1.21 billion, according to the Korea Securities Depository.

South Korean companies related to quantum computing also suffered losses.

Korea's iWinplus shed 20.67 percent, Axgate lost 13.2 percent, Wooriro declined 11.04 percent and ICTK dropped 10.73 percent, among others. These stocks suffered another hit Tuesday when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg echoed Huang’s cautious outlook on quantum computing, saying the technology is “still quite a ways off from being a truly practical paradigm.”