Korean fried chicken with the chairmen of SK Group and LG. Yellowtail sashimi at Nobu with Larry Ellison and Elon Musk. Mapo tofu and whiskey with TSMC founder Morris Chang.
People are so curious about where Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang eats, there’s a blog that tracks his sumptuous dinners out around the world. But the real tea, said Huang during the chipmaker’s blowout second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, is who he dines with.
“One of the funnest things to do is just to go figure out where I go for dinner, and who I have dinner with,” said Huang during the quarterly call that saw Nvidia’s stock jump more than 4% in after-hours trading. “Their stock price doubles the next day.”
Huang was responding to a request from an analyst at Goldman Sachs to rank the most acute constraints on Nvidia’s ability to meet customer demand, against the backdrop of the blockbuster 70% revenue growth the company projected for next fiscal year. The figure was significantly higher than analysts’ 44% estimate, but Huang and Nvidia CFO Colette Kress specified that there were still heavy supply constraints holding back the $5 trillion chipmaker. The analyst asked Huang to rank items like data center power, shell availability, memory pricing, and wafer foundry access that might be limiting growth.
“There’s something funny I could say, but I’m going to just not,” quipped Huang. “I think the answer is our entire supply chain is challenged, and everybody is really running flat out and more capacity is coming online all the time, which is one of the advantages.”
Nvidia currently has supply for 70% of the demand from current customers, said Huang during the call, adding that demand is “much higher than that.” He said the company doesn’t like to disappoint customers but it will take the help of the entire supply chain to get more compute capacity available.
The tech giant jolted investors on Wednesday with a blockbuster second quarter earnings report, posting $96.2 billion in revenue, well above analysts’ $92.2 billion consensus estimate. Nvidia also projected that it would grow revenue 70% next year, meaning revenue could soar more than $100 billion above where analysts were modeling. The stock rallied more than 4% on the preliminary forecast.
Yellowtail sashimi
Huang didn’t name a restaurant, dinner companion or supplier, for that matter, but the Nvidia CEO famously eats dinner out while he travels around the globe and photographers have caught him tasting local dishes, tipping servers, and taking photos with crowds outside of restaurants and night markets where he eats.
In 2024, Oracle founder Ellison said he and SpaceX CEO Musk had taken Huang out to dinner at Nobu Palo Alto and “begged” Huang for more GPUs.
“I would describe the dinner as Oracle—me and Elon begging Jensen for GPUs,” Ellison recalled in 2024. “Please take our money. Please take our money. By the way, I got dinner. No, no, take more of it. We need you to take more of our money please.”
The plan worked, said Ellison.
In the time since, Huang has turned up at restaurants in Taipei, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Seoul.
In June, the “Jensen Eats” blog reported he stopped over in Korea and visited a barbecue restaurant with a name that translates to “Hey brother, it’s me!.” He ate with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo, and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin. According to tech founder Dan Liu, who writes the blog, the crew dined on grilled meat wrapped in perilla leaves, a dish called ssam. Liu wrote that because LG’s Koo is the youngest, he grilled pork for the group.
In the run-up to the group outing, LG rose by 30% on reports that Koo would meet with Huang, and LG affiliates followed suit with increases for its listed units ranging from 17% to 29%.
The halo effect even extends to where Huang eats. He had chicken and beers with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y Lee and Hyundai Motor executive chair Chung Euisun last October and shares of poultry processing company Cherrybro rose, along with fried chicken company Kyochon F&B. Co., and fried-chicken robot company Neuromeka Co., Bloomberg reported.
As for meeting customer demand, Huang said Nvidia is trying to be as transparent as possible as more capacity comes online in dribs and drabs every day. He did not, however, disclose where he’s eating dinner tonight.
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