Jensen Huang: The Flowing Mascot

Outside a barbecue restaurant named "Hey, It's Me" in the Hongdae commercial district of Seoul, thousands of people gathered.

They weren't there to chase K - pop stars. They were waiting for a 63 - year - old man in a black leather jacket.

Inside the restaurant, four people sat around a round table. In Korean dining culture, seating arrangements and roles are strictly hierarchical. The eldest person sits in the main seat and leads the drinking session; the youngest sits at the end and is responsible for grilling meat, pouring drinks, and taking plates from the waiters.

This set of rules is rooted in the Confucian hierarchical order. Even the heads of chaebols worth billions of dollars have to follow the age - based seating arrangement when they enter a barbecue restaurant.

That night, in the main seat was Choi Tae - won, 65 years old, the chairman of SK Group. To his left was Lee Hae - jin, the founder of Naver, and to his right was Koo Kwang - mo, 48 years old, the chairman of LG Group.

Koo Kwang - mo was the youngest at the table. So, this third - generation member of the family that controls South Korea's fourth - largest chaebol was assigned the tasks of a "maknae" (the youngest in a group): pulling out tissues from the ceiling dispenser and laying them in front of everyone, pouring water for each person, and then picking up the grill tongs and standing in front of the grill, constantly flipping the pork belly.

Jensen Huang was the last to arrive. He was blocked by the crowd at the door for a few minutes before squeezing in. His black leather jacket still carried the heat of early summer. His seat was a guest seat, and he sat at the table and began to learn the Korean dining etiquette.

Choi Tae - won used a spoon to tap on the glass and mixed soju into the beer. This is the "bomb cocktail". As soon as the shop owner finished demonstrating, Jensen Huang grabbed the spoon and tapped on the glass himself. When Koo Kwang - mo passed the grilled meat over, Lee Hae - jin taught him to wrap pickles and pork belly with perilla leaves. He followed the example, wrapped a big mouthful and stuffed it into his mouth, and then picked up a chili and dipped it in the sauce to eat.

As the dinner was coming to an end, Jensen Huang lowered his head and wrote a line on the table where he sat: "JENSEN WAS HERE", and then added three more words "LOVE LOVE LOVE" below it.

This was not a dinner for the head of the world's most valuable company. It was a script arranged according to local cultural codes. In this script, the CEO of the world's most valuable technology company was just a foreign guest who needed to be taught how to eat barbecue.

After dinner, Jensen Huang walked out of the door and went to a nearby fried chicken shop, where he began to distribute honey - banana - flavored potato chips to the on - looking citizens. The next day, convenience store data showed that the sales of that kind of potato chips soared by 776% compared to the same day of the previous week.

Let's rewind the time five days. In Taipei, Jensen Huang stood under the spotlight at the GTC conference. On the big screen behind him, Vera Rubin, RTX Spark, and AI Factory scrolled. He spread his arms and declared, "The era of agent AI has arrived." Late at night after the speech, he was photographed carrying a bag of twist pastries in the night market.

Of course, even earlier, because he was the last to join Trump's White House entourage, Chinese netizens joked, "Don't go to a dinner where you're called at the last minute." Jensen Huang just grabbed a bag and rushed onto the plane.

Carrying a backpack at the Alaska airport, holding twist pastries in the Taipei night market, and learning to wrap perilla leaves at the Seoul barbecue table. Putting these three frames side by side, it's a silhouette of a 63 - year - old man appearing in three completely different scenarios across three countries.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, is becoming a mobile mascot.

What is the essence of a mascot? It is to be loved, chased, and photographed with, and also to be led on a leash. Its route is not determined by itself, but by festivals, crowds, and the team it represents.

In that barbecue restaurant in Seoul, one of the world's most powerful technology leaders sat in the guest seat, drank the "bomb cocktail", and learned to wrap perilla leaves according to Korean rules.

Jensen Huang is obeying the local cultural codes, the priority order of the supply chain, and a game that he must win but cannot fully control.

The rope tied to Jensen Huang has one end tied to NVIDIA's $5 trillion market value and the other end tied to the lifeline of the global AI industry. He has to keep moving because if he stops, the crowd will disperse.

What is Jensen Huang, the top figure in the tech circle, actually enduring, avoiding, selling, and fearing?

I. Business Radius: When One Person's Itinerary Becomes an Asset Pricing Model

If you draw Jensen Huang's flight routes in the past six months, you'll get a power map of the global AI industry.

In January, he was in a vegetable market in Pudong New Area, Shanghai; also in January, he was in a hot pot restaurant in Futian CBD, Shenzhen; in May, in Beijing, he ate zhajiangmian and fried squid, and Nanluoguxiang became his "street of pain"; in June, in Taipei, at the GTC conference, he gave a two - hour speech, released seven new chips, and announced the entry into the AI PC market; in June, in Seoul, he met with Hyundai Motor, LG, SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Naver, signed a multi - year HBM cooperation agreement with SK Hynix, and announced the establishment of a new AI R & D center in South Korea.

It's comparable to a head - of - state's diplomatic itinerary. The difference is that a head - of - state's itinerary is for diplomacy, while Jensen Huang's itinerary is for market value.

As we all know, NVIDIA's valuation model has changed. NVIDIA's price - to - earnings ratio has long been above 30 times. The implicit assumption is that it is not only a hardware supplier but also the sole builder of the infrastructure in the AI era.

This narrative needs continuous fuel, such as new products, new collaborations, new markets, and new concepts... Jensen Huang himself is the most direct pipeline.

Every time Jensen Huang makes an appearance, he accomplishes three tasks:

First, inject certainty into the supply chain. He wrote "Please produce more" at SK Hynix's booth. The value of this sentence lies in the person who sent this signal. The capital market interpreted it as: The orders for HBM have not slowed down. The next day, SK Hynix's stock price stopped falling.

Second, provide an anchor of confidence for the capital market. According to Caixin, on the morning of June 5, the South Korean Composite Stock Price Index fell by more than 6% at one point. The KOSPI 200 futures fell by more than 5% that day, triggering a circuit - breaker and suspending trading for five minutes. Many South Korean chip giants' stocks opened and closed lower. Samsung Electronics' stock price fell by nearly 7% in the early trading, and SK Hynix's stock price fell by more than 8%.

On June 8, when Jensen Huang held a press conference with Choi Tae - won, the chairman of SK Group, he said that if you are an AI stockholder, you should be happy because the stock prices of technology stocks are currently very low.

A company's CEO hopes that his words can stabilize another country's stock market.

Third, create demand for next - generation products. At the GTC, he spent a lot of time talking about agent AI and said that this kind of AI needs Vera Rubin. Customers haven't figured out what agent AI is, but they already feel that they need to buy new chips.

This classic method of packaging the product roadmap as a technological trend has a structural contradiction: the more successful he is, the more NVIDIA depends on him. The more it depends on him, the more he can't stop his itinerary.

Wherever Jensen Huang appears, there are opportunities; where he doesn't appear means being ignored. This "personal - centric" valuation logic means that he has to be on the road forever and can't be absent from any market for too long.

And when Jensen Huang personally recommends stocks, the line becomes even more blurred. He said in Taipei that "Marvell might be the next trillion - dollar company". The next day, Marvell's stock price soared by 32%, setting a record for the largest single - day increase since 2000. He said in Seoul, "Buy Qualcomm stocks", and Qualcomm's stock price rose by 3% in pre - market trading.

Jensen Huang is not an analyst. He hasn't disclosed his holdings, nor has he provided risk warnings for retail investors who follow his advice. You know, when a person with a net worth of nearly $200 billion and in control of the global AI computing power says "Buy it", this sentence is no longer a suggestion but a signal.

Signals can be interpreted, and they can also be misinterpreted.

II. The Tightrope Walker Has No Safety Net

Jensen Huang likes to say, "NVIDIA is a global company."

Looking at his itinerary map, you'll find a clear triangle: the United States (political protection), China (the largest market), and South Korea (the core supply chain). Jensen Huang has to keep moving among these three points because the break of any point will make NVIDIA pay an unbearable price.

In the United States, he is a meritorious foreigner.

NVIDIA's market value exceeds $5 trillion, which is a symbol of American technological hegemony. However, Jensen Huang's personal situation is far more complicated than the outside world imagines.

In a podcast interview in 2025, the host asked him face - to - face, "Aren't you selling AI chips to China just like selling enriched uranium to the enemy?"

Most symbolically, his name was not on the list of the entourage visiting China in May 2026 and he was invited by Trump over the phone later. This means that in the power corridors of Washington, Jensen Huang is still a person who needs permission to enter.

His Chinese - American identity, technical background, and relatively low - key political donation records, all these factors combined, keep him in a gray area of being usable but untrustworthy in the American political ecosystem.

In China, he is a partner to be vigilant against.

Jensen Huang once said that NVIDIA's share in the Chinese AI chip market has been close to 0%. Whether this figure is accurate doesn't matter. What matters is the trend: Huawei Ascend is rapidly replacing, domestic large - scale models like DeepSeek have run on domestic computing power, and the training clusters of Internet giants are migrating to domestic chips.

It's not that NVIDIA's products are not good, but customers can't be sure if they can buy them tomorrow. When the supply of a product completely depends on the game between two major powers, the only rational choice for enterprises is to look for alternative solutions. Jensen Huang is well aware of this.

He drank soybean milk, strolled in the alleys, and did the yangge dance at the annual meeting in Beijing. These pictures got hundreds of millions of views on Chinese social media, but behind them is the cruel reality of losing the world's largest application market.

His amiable behavior is more like a warm - hearted performance before saying goodbye. He knows he can't change the policy, but he can at least influence people's emotional connection with NVIDIA and leave a window for a possible return in the future.

In South Korea, he is the client asking for favors.

Public opinion generally believes that NVIDIA is the client and South Korean HBM manufacturers are the suppliers. But a closer look at the production capacity plan of HBM4 shows that the power relationship is far from that simple.

SK Hynix's production expansion won't be realized until 2027, while NVIDIA's Vera Rubin is expected to be shipped in large quantities in the second half of 2026. Each Vera Rubin chip needs to stack more than a dozen layers of HBM. Without enough memory, even the most powerful GPU is just a decoration.

The production capacity gap is not a possibility but a certainty. Jensen Huang wrote "Please produce more" at SK Hynix's booth. This sentence is a plea. A super - client is using personal charm and popularity to get priority in the supply chain.

Geopolitics has torn the global technology industry chain into pieces. Jensen Huang chooses to stand in the middle of the cracks.

He can't take sides because he needs every piece. He can only keep moving, stepping on the pieces with his feet to prevent the cracks from widening.

III. Jensen Huang's Non - fictional Narrative

Jensen Huang is the tech leader who is best at telling stories. His stories have three characteristics: grand, self - consistent, and NVIDIA is always the only solution.

He says, "Agent AI is coming", and then tells you that you need Vera Rubin; he says, "Physical AI is the next stage", and then launches Jetson Thor; he says, "Token economics is the future", and then emphasizes NVIDIA's leading performance per watt.

Each of these narratives has a technical basis when looked at separately. But when strung together, they form a precise closed - loop: Jensen Huang defines the future, NVIDIA provides the only infrastructure for the future, the market prices the future, and then uses the money earned to research and develop the next - generation products, and then defines an even more distant future.

It's an obvious conspiracy. In the highly uncertain AI era, following the lead of a big shot seems more reliable than making your own judgment. At the same time, any company that occupies a monopoly position in the industry will do the same.

The question is, can this closed - loop run forever?

The first narrative worth examining: AI PC.

The RTX Spark jointly launched by NVIDIA and MediaTek is said to redefine the PC. But supply - chain forecasts show that the shipment volume of devices based on this chip will be about 10 million in the next two years. In the PC market with an annual shipment volume of 250 million units, this is just a drop in the bucket.

Well - known analyst Ming - Chi Kuo pointed out in his report, "Currently, neither the sales volume nor the popularity of the PC market reflects a rigid demand for device - side AI computing." Most users still access cloud - based AI through browsers. The scenario of local large - scale models has not become a mass necessity except for a few developers and geeks.

The second narrative worth examining: humanoid robots.

Jensen Huang stood in the middle of nine humanoid robots at the GTC, and the picture was very impactful. But industry reports show that the training data for robots is extremely scarce, the Sim to Real technology is still at a critical point, and there are no mature solutions for the tactile sensors of dexterous hands and the high - degree - of - freedom joint drives.

NVIDIA provides the training platform and computing power, which are indeed essential underlying facilities. But the maturity of the platform does not mean the maturity of the industry. Just like the popularization of smartphone chips didn't happen until the iOS and Android ecosystems exploded. The real "iPhone moment" for humanoid robots is still a long way off.

More importantly, NVIDIA faces a structural problem in this field: If robots really become popular, will the greatest value remain in the hardware layer (chips) or the application layer (operating systems, software, services)?

Historical experience shows that in any mature technology ecosystem, hardware will eventually become commoditized, and profits will shift to the software and application layers. NVIDIA's current strategy is to try to occupy both the hardware and platform layers, but whether it can hold this position depends on whether it can build an irreplaceable software ecosystem like in the data - center field. In the robot field, this ecosystem is far from being formed.

The third narrative worth examining: Token economics.

Computing power equals revenue, and the number of Tokens per watt equals profit margin. This formula holds perfectly in NVIDIA's world because its business is to sell computing power.

But for enterprises using AI, what they care about is the application value, ROI, and whether it can solve practical problems, rather than how many Tokens are consumed.

Packaging the business model as a universal economic law is the most sophisticated marketing. NVIDIA currently holds the pricing power of Tokens because it is the only supplier. But if one day, even just theoretically, there is an alternative solution for computing power, such as in - memory computing, photon computing, or a more efficient distributed architecture, the price of Tokens will return to competitive pricing.

The deeper problem lies in reflexivity.

Jensen Huang says that AI is about to explode, capital floods in, computing power is purchased, and his chips are sold. Then he can turn around and say, "See, I was right."

This is not a prophecy but a self - fulfilling cycle. There is nothing wrong with the cycle itself, but the problem is that it covers up a key variable: the real demand of end - users.

Capital can purchase computing power, but computing power ultimately has to serve applications. If the