Nvidia without Jensen Huang. What lies ahead for Asian chipmakers?

from Nvidia The management shakeup is unlikely to cause immediate disruption for major Asian semiconductor suppliers, such as Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., but Jensen Huang’s departure has raised questions about the company’s long-term product strategy and supply chain relationships.

The bigger issue for investors and suppliers is whether Nvidia can maintain the pace of innovation and strong ties to key partners that Huang helped establish as the company built its dominance in artificial intelligence chips.

In a research note released Friday, Nam Dae-jong and Kim Yeon-mi, analysts at South Korean brokerage Daol Investment & Securities, said Huang’s departure is not expected to affect the semiconductor industry’s near-term outlook.

However, they flagged uncertainties about Nvidia’s mid- and long-term product roadmap, including how its new leadership would coordinate with AI ecosystem partners.

For chipmakers in Asia, a key question is whether Nvidia’s relationships with its manufacturing partners could change under new management.

Nam and Kim expect Nvidia’s foundry relationship with TSMC to remain unchanged, given the established partnership between the companies.

They also expect the relationship between Nvidia and Samsung’s foundry business to continue, citing growing cooperation between the companies, including manufacturing involving Samsung’s 4-nanometer process and work on next-generation high-bandwidth memory technology.

Analysts said custom AI chips, or application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, are emerging as alternatives to Nvidia’s graphics processing units and could accelerate diversification in the AI ​​chip market.

They cautioned, however, against interpreting the growing competition as a sign of weakening demand for memory semiconductors, particularly high-bandwidth memory, or HBM.

Nonetheless, uncertainty remains over Nvidia’s long-term product roadmap, given Huang’s central role in shaping the company’s business strategy and allocating resources.

SK Hynix, another key Nvidia supplier, reversed earlier gains to close 3.03% lower on Friday.

In a research note released earlier today, Shinhan Securities said investors initially shrugged off concerns about Nvidia’s change in leadership and instead focused on the AI ​​sector’s broader prospects.

South Korea’s Kospi also reversed earlier gains on Friday. In a research note, iM Securities said the impact of Nvidia’s leadership change on the broader semiconductor sector appeared limited, pointing to gains in AMD and Broadcom shares in the previous session in the United States and continued investment demand for AI companies.

ASUS co-CEO SY Hsu told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that Nvidia’s leadership change was unlikely to change its competitive advantages in the near term, although the company would monitor any impact on product quality, service costs and deliveries.

“I think the advantage of the Nvidia product and the total AI ecosystem will not change overnight,” Hsu said.

ASUS, which works with Nvidia on graphics cards and AI servers, has not yet interacted with interim CEO Colette Kress, Hsu said, adding that the company was looking to meet to better understand any potential strategic changes.

Longer term, Hsu said Huang has played a key role in helping Nvidia and its partners accelerate innovation, and he will monitor whether the company can maintain that pace without him.