SK Hynix nears $1 trillion as AI chip demand soars
SK Hynix’s surge toward $1 trillion shows how AI demand is concentrating power in a few chipmakers, with South Korea poised for a rare market milestone.
Artificial intelligence has turned SK Hynix from a cyclical memory supplier into one of the market’s most valuable industrial assets, with the South Korean chipmaker nearing a $1 trillion valuation just weeks after Samsung Electronics crossed the same threshold. If both companies stay above that line, South Korea would become the first country outside the United States to have more than one trillion-dollar company.
The rally has been driven by relentless demand for memory chips used in AI systems, especially high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, which sits at the center of AI servers and the global race to expand computing capacity. SK Hynix shares have climbed more than 200% in 2026 after a 274% gain in 2025, making the company one of the clearest beneficiaries of the AI infrastructure buildout. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. remains Asia’s largest company by market value, but the combined scale of TSMC, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix shows how heavily the region now anchors the world’s semiconductor supply chain.
The rise matters far beyond investors. Memory chips were once treated as commoditized, cyclical products; now they are strategic inputs in a market where pricing power, manufacturing capacity and geopolitical leverage are tightly linked. Sydney-based analyst Fabien Yip said the market was running on FOMO, especially in AI-related names in Japan and Korea, a reminder that the surge is being powered by momentum as well as fundamentals.
SK Hynix’s latest numbers help explain the enthusiasm. For fiscal 2025, the company reported revenue of 97.1467 trillion won, operating profit of 47.2063 trillion won and net profit of 42.9479 trillion won. It also announced additional dividends of 1 trillion won, or 1,500 won per share, taking total fiscal 2025 dividends to 2.1 trillion won. In a January 5 outlook, SK Hynix said the global semiconductor industry was entering a transitional period as AI infrastructure expands and the memory market becomes a key beneficiary.
The company had already said on September 12, 2025, that it had completed world-first HBM4 development and was preparing for mass production. By October, it had sold out all chip production for 2026 amid extraordinary AI demand. In May 2026, major global tech firms were even making unprecedented offers to invest in SK Hynix production lines and manufacturing tools to secure supply, underscoring how concentrated and contested advanced memory capacity has become.
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