Seoul, South Korea
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Three billionaires shocked diners once they walked into a well-liked fried rooster restaurant on Thursday – and picked up everyone’s invoice.
Jensen Huang, CEO of the world’s most useful firm, AI chip large Nvidia, went to the Seoul chicken-and-beer joint with the leaders of two of South Korea’s international tech titans: Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group govt chair Chung Eui-sun.
Fried rooster paired with ice-cold draft beer, referred to as “chimaek,” is a must have for anybody visiting South Korea, and the tech potentates received their fill at Kkanbu Chicken within the coronary heart of the nation’s capital, forward of the APEC summit in Gyeongju.
“I love fried chicken and beer with my friends, so Kkanbu is a perfect place, right?” Huang instructed live-streaming passersby as he arrived on the restaurant. As effectively as being the identify of the restaurant chain, “Kkanbu” is a slang phrase for a really shut good friend.
The three ate cheese balls, cheese sticks, boneless rooster and a fried rooster together with Korean beer Terra and the native rice spirit soju, based on nationwide information company Yonhap.
Video from native information retailers confirmed the trio – mixed internet value $195 billion – linking their ingesting arms to take a shot of beer, a gesture that, in South Korea, cements friendship whereas ingesting.
Huang, Lee and Chung stepped out to supply rooster and cheese sticks to the assembled crowd.
“The chicken wings was so good. Have you been here before? It’s incredible, right?” Huang mentioned when requested about his favorite objects.
“Anyone? Fried chicken?” he provided as he held rooster baskets up.
When Huang rang the “golden bell,” a gesture to pay the invoice for everybody within the restaurant, individuals cheered — although Samsung’s Lee paid the invoice and Chung paid for a second spherical, based on Yonhap.
Fresh from his high-stakes trade talks with US President Donald Trump, Chinese chief Xi Jinping is amongst Asian heads of authorities who’ve descended on Gyeongju, in southern South Korea, for the APEC summit.
Access to cutting-edge AI chips – equivalent to people who have pushed Nvidia to a market cap of about $5 trillion – is amongst points being thrashed out between the US and China.
On Friday on the APEC summit, Huang met South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung, and introduced Nvidia would offer greater than 260,000 graphics processing items to South Korean corporations, together with these of his ingesting buddies.
Huang mentioned his firm would work with Samsung and Hyundai, in addition to native internet large Naver and chipmaker SK, to strengthen bodily AI, equivalent to by creating AI-driven autonomous autos, based on the presidential workplace.