SK Group boss says AI 'boom could vanish, just like the gold rush disappeared'

The Chairman of the Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and SK Group, Chey Tae-won had some choice words to say at the recent 47th KCCI Jeju forum.

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The SK Group chairman compared the AI boom to the gold rush, adding: "When there was no more gold, the sellers became unable to sell pickaxes. Without making money, the AI boom could vanish, just as the gold rush disappeared".

Chey expects that NVIDIA will continue to be one of the biggest companies by market capitalization over the next three years. The AI boom recently led NVIDIA to a record $3.3 trillion market cap.

NVIDIA is the dominant player in the AI hardware game, with its Hopper H100 AI GPU powering some of the largest AI GPU clusters in the world, while its next-gen Blackwell B100 and B200 AI GPUs are in the ovens right now, ready to absolutely blow away the H100 in terms of AI performance.

This is where the SK Group boss made his comments that if AMD and Arm were to pump out powerful AI chips but at lower prices, NVIDIA's dominant business model "may fall apart". The SK Group boss recently traveled to the United States to meet with the CEOs of Amazon, Intel, Microsoft, OpenAI, and NVIDIA.

Chey said: "US Big Tech showed demand for AI data centers equipped with our semiconductors and energy solutions. Although it is impossible for us to supply all components for AI data centers, we are still tasked with building more efficient AI data centers by using our technologies and materials".