Artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang is headed to South Korea amid the backdrop of his company reaching the milestone $5 trillion market cap. Incidentally, this comes amid the ASEAN Summit and as United States President Donald Trump's and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to meet this week.

Notably, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are set to meet on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit on October 30. This will be their first face-to-face meeting since Donald Trump returned to the White House and amid deteriorating trade relations between the two economic giants due to tariff hikes. The meeting has left the South Korean hosts “in a difficult balancing act”, as per an AP report.

So, amid all this, why is Jensen Huang also headed to South Korea? Well to attend the APEC Summit. And he is not alone. Leaders from major Pacific Rim economies, including China, Japan and the US, will join him at the Summit this week in Gyeongju. The annual gathering, which usually pushes for free trade, is now dealing with the impact of sweeping US tariffs.

For Jensen Huang in particular, the Donald Trump-Xi Jinping meet could also result in some positive news for his company Nvidia.

In August, the Trump administration had discussed allowing sale of Nvidia's chips to China, under certain conditions. Further, when he left for for APEC, Donald Trump told reporters aboard the Air Force One that he will speak to Xi Jinping about Nvidia's chips on October 30.

Donald Trump praised Nvidia's Blackwell chips as “super-duper” and which will “define the next era of American innovation”. He said he might speak to Xi Jinping about them, but did not elaborate to reporters.

“I think we may be talking about that with President Xi,” Donald Trump said, adding that he is “very optimistic” about his meeting.

This was also confirmed by a senior White House official, who told reporters on October 29, “Trump said he would speak to Xi about Nvidia's state-of-the-art Blackwell AI chips, with sales to China a key sticking point in trade talks.”

Notably, Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip architecture, is a cutting-edge processor series that underpins advances in AI, data analysis, and defence systems.

While Trump will skip the main APEC leaders’ session, he will attend a private dinner with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and hold several bilateral meetings, including the highly anticipated face-to-face with Xi Jinping, before departing on on October 30 itself.