Demand for memory is expected to continue to grow with customers launching new products in the second half of the year. The emergence of ChatGPT is prompting nations around the world to build their own AI infrastructure and data that are independent, the company said in a statement. Shares of SK Hynix rose 2% in pre-market trade in Seoul Thursday.
The results reinforce SK Hynix’s lead over bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co. in high-bandwidth memory that help Nvidia Corp.’s processors develop artificial intelligence.“The record performance was driven by HBM,” said MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint. “Yet it also underscores SK Hynix’s growing leadership in the overall memory market,” which includes DRAM and NAND. After the chipmaker claimed the top spot in the global DRAM market by revenue in the first quarter, it is now competing head-to-head with Samsung for leadership in the overall memory market, he said.
Operating income at SK Hynix hit 9.21 trillion won ($6.7 billion) on a 35% rise in revenue, which also hit a quarterly record, helped in part by a recovery in NAND. DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, is a type of memory most commonly used to process data in computers and servers. NAND is a type of memory used to store data.
SK Hynix has benefited from Samsung’s delay in obtaining Nvidia’s certification for its most advanced product, 12-layer HBM3E. That’s given SK Hynix an unusually long lead time in the highly lucrative segment.Now, SK Hynix is racing to stay ahead of deeper-pocketed Samsung. Some investors expect the chips-to-smartphone company — which this month reported its first quarterly profit decline since 2023 — to have hit bottom over the summer. Nvidia is shifting toward a new generation of memory chips, offering Samsung an opening.
SK Hynix’s shares have shed about 10% from a 2025 high they notched this month. Goldman Sachs downgraded the Korean chipmaker for the first time in more than three years on expectations of competitors encroaching on its market share. SK Hynix and Samsung together account for more than 80% of the HBM market.
Client Nvidia, which controls more than 90% of the market for chips needed to build AI systems, became the first publicly traded company to hit a valuation of $4 trillion earlier this month. Investor expectations about the company resuming sales of its H20 AI chips to China helped the stock, after US President Donald Trump’s administration reversed its earlier stance on measures to limit Beijing’s AI ambitions.
Long-term prospects for advanced memory makers may depend on expanding beyond Nvidia, given the incentives on the US company to diversify its vendors and negotiate lower prices.
SK Hynix is looking to strengthen ties with the likes of OpenAI Inc. and deepen ties by building AI infrastructure. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman said in a post on X on July 21 that his company will bring online 1 million graphics processing units (GPUs) by the end of the year and is trying to figure out how to scale that a hundredfold.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, accompanied by SK Hynix Chief Executive Officer Kwak No-jung recently met with Altman at OpenAI’s office in San Francisco. They discussed collaboration on semiconductors, including HBM, according to local media.
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