Nvidia CEO meets esports icon Faker as 1st stop in Korea

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, third from left, and T1 superstar Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, fourth from left, pose with the rest of the T1 players at a PC cafe in the Hongdae area of Mapo District, Seoul, Friday. Yonhap

The first person Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met in Seoul on Friday was Korea’s League of Legends superstar Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok.

Huang met the esports legend at a PC cafe run by Faker’s esports team, T1, in the Hongdae area of Mapo District at around 3 p.m. The meeting included Faker and the team’s four other players and took place less than two hours after Huang landed in Seoul.

“This is the birthplace of esports,” Huang said while meeting T1 at the cafe. He added that Korea has been in his heart for a long time and said he is a big fan the team.

“When I first came to Korea, there was Starcraft. It was the first spectator sport for esports,” Huang said. He added that Korean esports players opted to use optimal graphics processing units (GPU) and chose GeForce, Nvidia’s brand of globally popular graphics cards.

Huang asked Faker whether he and his team uses GeForce. They said they use RTX 4070, and Huang replied, “That’s an antique.” Later Huang and Faker exchanged gifts, with the former presenting an RTX 5090 GPU sporting his autograph, while Faker presented a jersey with his name and the number 1 on the back.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok hold a conversation in front of fans and reporters at a PC cafe in the Hongdae area of Mapo District, Seoul Friday. Yonhap

Huang hosted an impromptu lucky draw for cafe visitors, giving away Nvidia GPUs. One of the winners was from Ireland.

Huang has openly expressed his affection for Korea’s esports culture and gaming industry. Last October, he appeared at the Nvidia GeForce Gamer Festival in Seoul, which marked the 25th anniversary of the GPU brand’s debut in Korea, and said that Nvidia “would not exist without Korean gamers and Korea’s esports culture.”

This time, Huang also described gaming as “Nvidia’s origin,” adding that Korea is a market with one of the world’s most advanced esports and gaming cultures.

Nvidia, now the world’s most valuable publicly traded company with a market capitalization of about $5.4 trillion and a dominant position in artificial intelligence accelerators and platforms, began as a graphics card maker.

The company’s early growth was supported by a crucial investment from Japan’s Sega during a period of financial difficulty. Korea’s PC gaming culture also helped generate early demand for graphics processing units, accelerating the development and adoption of many of Nvidia’s core technologies.

During his stay in Korea, Huang is expected to meet leaders of major gaming companies, including NC founder Kim Taek-jin and Krafton Chairman of the Board Chang Byung-gyu.