“I am trust”... Why Jeon Cheong-jo was brought up after Nvidia lost 260 trillion won in market value

[Financial News] Nvidia, the global bellwether in AI semiconductors, suffered a sharp share-price drop after facing major setbacks in the form of CEO Jensen Huang’s personal-life scandal and national security risks. As the company lost about 260 trillion won in market value in a single day and U.S. shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit, investors in South Korea’s stock market have been sharing bitterly ironic commentary, including recalling the story of fraudster Jeon Cheong-jo, who once claimed to be a “major Nvidia shareholder.”
On the 9th (local time), Nvidia shares closed at $178.67 on the New York Stock Exchange, down 4.27% from the previous trading day. At one point during the session, they plunged more than 8%, heightening investor anxiety. The company lost $190 billion in market value in a single day, equivalent to about 260 trillion won.
The catalyst for the latest plunge was the spread of allegations about CEO Jensen Huang’s affair to claims of links with Chinese intelligence agencies. According to foreign media outlets including The New York Times (NYT), Huang was embroiled in controversy over an inappropriate relationship with Alice Huang, an ethnic Chinese businesswoman suspected of having ties to Chinese intelligence. Alice Huang is a former executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed International, and U.S. intelligence agencies are reportedly investigating whether she tried to leak sensitive information about advanced AI semiconductors to China.
On the 8th, CEO Huang admitted to having an affair and formally apologized in a message to employees, while Nvidia’s board brought in outside legal experts to launch an independent investigation. No signs of a leak of company secrets have been found so far, but the mere fact that Nvidia—a central player in the U.S.-China battle for technological supremacy—was exposed to espionage risks sent shockwaves through the market.
The situation quickly escalated into a legal dispute. Reuters reported that shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit against Nvidia and CEO Huang in federal court in San Jose, California, alleging violations of securities laws. The plaintiffs claimed the company had caused investors massive losses by failing to disclose in a timely manner the risks related to executives’ personal lives and China-related national security.
As Nvidia faces an unprecedented leadership crisis in its history, investors in South Korea are once again talking about the outlandish fraud schemes of Jeon Cheong-jo, who made headlines in 2023. Jeon, who is serving a finalized 13-year prison sentence for, among other things, pretending to be an illegitimate child of a chaebol family, once claimed at a paid lecture that “I’m a major Nvidia shareholder” and that “when the company was in serious trouble four or five years ago, I demanded an equity stake from Jensen Huang and helped him resolve the crisis.”
Faced with the share-price collapse, Korean retail investors in U.S. stocks have been parodying Jeon’s past catchphrase, “I am trust,” and posting self-deprecating remarks such as “Jeon Cheong-jo’s parole is urgently needed to save Jensen Huang in this crisis” and “We should have bought Nvidia when Jeon Cheong-jo said so.” 
The financial investment industry is watching how the situation may affect Nvidia’s fundamentals, seeing it as more than a mere incident. At a time when concerns about slower growth in the AI industry and doubts about the sustainability of big tech companies’ capital expenditures (CAPEX) are mounting, the impact on the future and credibility of CEO Huang, who has exercised unmatched leadership, is expected to weigh significantly on the stock’s valuation.
[email protected] Moon Young-jin Reporter