SEOUL: South Korea expects contracted deliveries of Nvidia graphics processing units to go ahead without disruption despite the controversy surrounding the chipmaker's chief executive Jensen Huang, the country's vice minister of science and ICT said.
Ryu Jemyung told a parliamentary budget committee that 10,000 GPUs funded under a 2025 supplementary budget had already arrived and were in use. GPUs planned for 2026 were under contract and expected to enter service this year.
"We expect production and the delivery schedule for contracted volumes to proceed without disruption," Ryu said. The ministry was monitoring developments and discussing prices and schedules with Nvidia's Korean arm, he added.
The reassurance from Seoul, one of the largest government buyers of Nvidia's AI chips, came as the fallout from the affair spread.
Nvidia shares closed 4.3 per cent lower on Monday after falling nearly 9 per cent during the session, leaving the stock more than 20 per cent below its October peak. A proposed class action filed in a federal court in San Jose, California, minutes after the market closed accuses the company and Huang of misleading investors about his relationship with the woman at the centre of the reports. The complaint seeks unspecified damages.
In Seoul, a planned visit by Huang's daughter Madison Huang, an Nvidia senior director, was cancelled. AI startup Rebellions said a visit to its headquarters and a partner dinner were called off because of unavoidable internal circumstances at Nvidia. Kakao Mobility cancelled a photo session and a question-and-answer event with her, but said its business agreement with Nvidia would proceed, with senior director Gaurav Agarwal attending instead.
Nvidia AI Day Seoul, a two-day event expected to draw about 2,000 participants to discuss physical AI, agentic AI and infrastructure, went ahead as planned, according to South Korean media.
The controversy follows reports, citing US intelligence officials, that businesswoman Alice Huang -- a former senior executive at Singapore-based data centre company Megaspeed and no relation to the Nvidia chief -- allegedly passed information to Beijing while in a relationship with Jensen Huang.
Huang told employees in a letter that he had been unfaithful to his wife, apologised to his family and the company, and said he would cooperate fully with the board's inquiry. Nvidia's board said on Sunday that a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, would examine whether he had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, and that it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets had been compromised.
US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the FBI was looking into the matter. "I know the FBI is looking into it in terms of something else, and I think that he'll be in good shape," he said at the White House, adding that Huang had told him he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy. Trump said he did not expect to raise the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in Shenzhen next week.
China's foreign ministry rejected the allegations. "The so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated. It is nothing but smears against China," spokesman Guo Jiakun said.
Alice Huang has not responded publicly to the reports. Megaspeed has described itself as a "compliant and legitimate company" and said it had appointed external counsel for its own internal investigation. No charges have been announced and Nvidia has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Three Republican committee chairmen in the US House of Representatives have asked Huang for a closed-door briefing by November 18 on Nvidia's safeguards against foreign espionage, according to a letter sent last week. Nvidia reports quarterly results on November 17.
(With inputs from PTI and media reports)