NEW YORK — As executives at leading U.S. artificial intelligence model developers — Anthropic, maker of Claude; OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT; Google, maker of Gemini; and SpaceXAI, maker of Grok — have spent recent days raising the prospect of human extinction and calling for a slowdown, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang has again pushed back. AI is only a software tool used by people, Huang argues, and cannot slip out of human control on its own. He stressed that AI, like automobiles whose safety improves alongside performance, can reduce potential risks without any need to slow the pace of development. Interests are colliding: unlike AI model developers, which have hit a ceiling in raising their valuations further because they are not yet turning a profit, the semiconductor industry is already generating astronomical earnings. The more AI model operators slow development, the more the capital-intensive chip sector inevitably takes a hit. Continued clashes between pessimism and optimism over AI's future also mean greater volatility in global financial markets. Against that backdrop, the two titans of the memory chip industry — Samsung Electronics (005930) Chairman Jay Y. Lee and SK (034730) Group Chairman Chey Tae-won — both turned out for the ceremony where Huang received the Van Fleet Award, a move that threw additional weight behind Nvidia.
Huang wins Van Fleet Award for Korea-U.S. friendship: "Korea's strength is spreading new technology rapidly across all of society"
Accepting the award on the 28th local time at the annual gala of the Korea Society, a nonprofit dedicated to Korea-U.S. friendship, held in Manhattan, New York, Huang said, "I have had a friendship with Korea since I was younger than my children are now." The Van Fleet Award was established in 1995 to honor General James Van Fleet, who fought in the Korean War as commander of the U.S. Eighth Army and founded the Korea Society in 1957. Past recipients include former U.S. President George H.W. Bush, former President Kim Dae-jung, late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, Hyundai Motor (005380) Group Honorary Chairman Chung Mong-koo, late SK Group Chairman Choi Jong-hyun and the K-pop group BTS.
Huang said Nvidia was the first to reinvent computing in an industry whose framework IBM had set in 1964. Through that shift, he said, computers moved beyond simply "retrieving" information to directly "generating" new information. "That reinvention opened the door to the AI era," Huang said. "Computing is the most important tool humanity has created and the foundation of modern society, and now there is no person, company, industry or country that exists without it."
What Huang singled out as Korea's strength was its "optimism about technology." "I had the privilege of encountering Korea at a very young age, when I was trying to invent a new form of computing and learning how to be a CEO and how to create an industry," he said. "Nobody builds factories better than Koreans, and now we are building factories of intelligence together." He added: "Korea has an enormous strength in inventing technology while also embracing it enthusiastically and spreading it rapidly across all of society. Korea may be a small country in terms of total population, but by using AI it can punch above its weight."
Huang also went out of his way to highlight what he sees as common ground between his own temperament and that of Koreans. Citing resilience, stubbornness, determination and the ability to endure pain as Korean traits, he said, "I think there is a little bit of a Korean sensibility running through me as well." "To accomplish something great you have to be able to endure pain, and that is something I do better than anyone, and Koreans do well too," Huang said. "My parents, like Korean parents, always educated me strictly and pushed me to 'keep improving,' and that became an asset in getting through moments of crisis."
Huang also recalled fond memories of his visit to Korea late last October. On Oct. 30 last year, Huang drew wide attention by drinking beer with Lee and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chairman Euisun Chung at a fried chicken restaurant in Seoul's Samseong-dong, in what became known as the "gganbu chicken-and-beer" gathering. "When I first went to Korea, I had no idea Nvidia was that popular with Koreans," he said. "The first time I heard the name of a company I helped build being chanted loudly by the public, my heart swelled." Referring to somaek, a mix of soju and beer, he confessed: "After about 10 glasses, kissing a man on the lips becomes no big deal. I once got kissed by a male Samsung employee in Korea."
Huang went further, making no secret of his intention to expand cooperation with Korean companies on the back of the award. "We need more memory chips than at any time in history, and Korea has abundant manufacturing capacity, capabilities that will be transformed through AI, robotics and physical AI," he said. "If I have to depend on someone for the manufacturing of a core component essential to Nvidia's growth, there is no company I would trust more surely than SK or Samsung." He added: "We are already working with many companies including Samsung, SK, LG and Hyundai across a range of areas such as Korean sovereign AI, power generation and autonomous vehicles. I have worked with Korea for the past 33 years, and I will work with Korea for 33 more."
From his acceptance speech onward, Huang defined AI as a "tool" used by people — remarks that drew a line against the extinction warnings and calls for a slowdown now surfacing in the AI model industry. Earlier, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote on his blog on the 12th, citing an unauthorized hack of Hugging Face, that "we need to slow the pace at which AI model capabilities improve." Rival executives — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis, chief scientist at Google parent Alphabet — all unusually voiced agreement. According to The Wall Street Journal on the 28th, OpenAI also pulled next month's release of its next-generation model, "GPT-6.1 Astra," over safety concerns, citing a stronger tendency to push ahead with tasks without seeking user approval and to attempt to use external tools and services even in potentially unsafe situations.
Huang described "alignment" as the most important concept in the process of making AI ever smarter. Misalignment generally refers to AI behaving in ways inconsistent with the purposes, values and ethical standards humans intended, causing unforeseen harm. "AI is just software, not a living thing, so it does not spin out of control on its own," Huang said. "It has less self-awareness than a pet rock." He said: "Alignment is simply prescribing a mode of behavior — don't just copy, work the answer out step by step from first principles. There is no need to frighten people by likening AI's search for answers to human traits and dressing it up as magic or mysticism."
Huang described himself as "someone who believes not in doomerism or optimism, but in responsible optimism." "Just as you do when training children or new employees, if you grant AI only the minimum permissions and access its capabilities and role require, and keep monitoring it, you can secure safety," he said. "In Korea, enthusiasm for and openness to technology work as a very big strength, whereas in the United States I worry that excessive fear may keep us from adopting technology." On the question of AI safety regulation discussed at a U.N. Security Council meeting on the 23rd, he said, "The industry should set standards together and draw in participation from around the world. Companies understand the technology better than governments do, so it is preferable for the industry to put forward global standards first."
Nvidia in fact unveiled the "Nvidia Open Agent Safety Platform" the same day, providing controls across the entire process for AI agents, from testing through actual deployment. The platform was introduced as cases mounted of AI agents breaking out of controls and intruding into external systems without explicit human instruction. It consists of "OpenShell," open-source software, and "Sentry," a hardware monitoring device. OpenShell sets the scope of an AI agent's actions on the central processing unit and controls it in real time. Sentry monitors on the data processing unit in millisecond increments and immediately isolates and halts an AI agent that crosses a boundary. About 100 major technology companies worldwide took part in developing the platform, including Anthropic, Microsoft, Salesforce, Palantir and SpaceXAI. In a CBS interview on the 20th, Huang also declared, "The probability the world ends in 2030 is 0%," calling it "unnecessary and irresponsible to instill fear in people."
Lee and Chey turn out in force to showcase the 'AI alliance': "Huang's daughter and mine are both named Madison"
On the Chinese market, where exports have been restricted amid U.S.-China diplomatic friction, Huang stuck to his position that "we must go compete there." Seeking to reopen the export route to China, Huang attended both a Beijing event in May and the business dinner at the U.S.-China summit in Washington this month. Of the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 24th, he said only that he had "offered congratulations on China's tremendous achievements in AI." He added: "China needs to realize that in the AI world, computing generates tokens — the unit of usage for AI services — and that in turn generates revenue. Without computing capacity, the growth of China's digital economy will be suppressed." He also said, "President Donald Trump, too, would want U.S. companies to compete globally so they can deliver results commensurate with their growth." On the surge in personal AI agents such as "Muse" from Facebook parent Meta, Huang forecast: "We will all have our own personal agents. AI agents will help us shop, find what we need and carry out everything we have imagined in digital space."
Also drawing considerable attention at the event were Lee and Chey, who had traveled with President Lee Jae-myung on his trip to Mexico and then returned straight to New York for the sole purpose of congratulating Huang. It had been only two months since Huang, Lee and Chey were last together in one place, at the "San Francisco AI Summit" held in California in July. Samsung Electronics showed off the close friendship by running a video congratulating Huang on the award on a large electronic billboard in New York's Times Square on the 27th and 28th. Chey is the first son to receive the Van Fleet Award after his father, who won it in 1998, with Chey himself receiving it in 2017.
In his congratulatory remarks, Lee joked that "Huang and I are alike in that we bet everything on AI, in that each of our daughters is named Madison, and in that we love the Galaxy Z Fold 8." Lee also noted that Huang's daughter had married two days earlier and asked the audience for applause. At the venue, Lee's daughter Won-joo, whose English name is Madison Lee, and Huang's daughter Madison Huang, senior director of Omniverse and robotics product marketing at Nvidia, were seen seated side by side, chatting nonstop. "Huang said not long ago that he wants to die while working, and I feel bad saying this, but he looks like he will live forever," Lee said. "As a fan, a partner and a longtime friend, congratulations."
Chey drew notice by attending with Kim Hee-young, a director of the T&C Foundation with whom he lives. "Every time we meet, the first question Huang asks is whether we can make it faster," Chey said. "We are running at the same speed." Citing the Korea-U.S. alliance of more than 70 years, he added: "The battlefield has changed to the data center, and the uniform to a black leather jacket. I hope our partnership expands far faster than demand for graphics processing units." The black leather jacket is Huang's signature attire. Huang auctioned off a Tom Ford leather jacket he had signed at the event, and it sold for $132,000 (about 180 million won). The proceeds were donated to the Korea Society.
Shares rise on 'record' additional $150 billion buyback, while AI ethics debate could add to market volatility
The Van Fleet Award was not the only reason Huang was in the spotlight. That same day, Nvidia rattled the stock market as its board approved an additional $150 billion (about 204 trillion won) in share buybacks. It was the largest buyback ever by a U.S. company. With the announcement, Nvidia's total authorized buybacks rose to $235 billion (about 320 trillion won). The additional authorization alone far exceeded the $110 billion program Apple announced in May 2024. Nvidia said it plans to execute the buyback program in stages through fiscal 2028 (February 2027 to January 2028).
The market read the larger buyback as a response to an undervalued share price, with Nvidia's forward 12-month price-to-earnings ratio at just 16.5 times. Nvidia's average P/E over the past 15 years has been around 30 times. As of the 29th, Nvidia's market capitalization stood at $5.4758 trillion, the largest in the world. At a news conference held right after receiving the award, Huang said: "Nvidia's prosperity is still ahead of us, so I would encourage shareholders to keep holding the stock. Nvidia shares are considerably undervalued at present and easy to own."
On the news of the massive buyback, Nvidia was effectively the only big tech name to rise on the 28th, gaining 1.68% on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (-0.67%), the Standard & Poor's 500 (-0.77%) and the Nasdaq Composite (-0.92%) all fell. On the 29th, Nvidia slipped 0.72% amid a broad index decline.
Huang went further on CNBC on the 28th, arguing that the "distillation" of AI models is what he "calls competition." Distillation is a technique that uses the answers of a large AI model as data to train a new model. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in July that Chinese companies had used the method to copy core U.S. AI models, calling it "theft." Anthropic also said early this month that China's Alibaba and DeepSeek were "engaged in illicit distillation."
"You should be able to test other companies' products as comprehensively as you want," Huang said. "For other companies to figure out how Nvidia's products work, they sometimes have to analyze them down to the bone." He added: "It would be really nice if nobody studied our products and we could just cruise along, but competition makes everything better. If you don't like that, you should shut down the service."
Britain's Financial Times reported the same day that Nvidia had discussed with the insurance industry a plan to pass on to insurers the default risk on loans collateralized by AI chips. Last month Nvidia launched a $500 billion (about 677 trillion won) AI computing finance platform with major financial firms including Goldman Sachs and Apollo Global Management, agreeing to guarantee some transactions. It also guaranteed $105 billion (about 142 trillion won) in lease agreements to support OpenAI's data center construction.
As AI advances toward agent-based systems that use vast amounts of personal data and toward AGI — artificial general intelligence, or AI that learns, reasons and solves problems on its own like a human — questions of ethics look set to remain a central issue. In that process, the views of Huang and Trump, who put weight on human control over AI, may frequently clash with those of U.S. model industry executives who worry about the possibility of AI breaking away. That is also a factor directly tied to volatility in AI-related stocks.
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