July 10 (Asia Today) — U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to expand production in the United States as Micron accelerates a major domestic investment plan, raising questions over whether Washington is signaling continued shortages in artificial intelligence memory chips.
Lutnick referred directly to Samsung and SK Hynix at Micron’s large-scale investment site in the United States. Micron is building a production plant in Clay, N.Y.
Lutnick said he wanted to bring Micron competitors Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to the United States and have them build production facilities there.
The remarks drew attention in South Korea because Samsung and SK Hynix recently announced plans to invest 800 trillion won, about $530 billion, in the Honam region in southwestern South Korea. Industry officials had already expected Washington to push the Korean chipmakers to increase U.S. investment.
Because Lutnick directly named the two companies and urged investment, attention is now focused on how the remarks could affect Samsung and SK Hynix.
Some analysts also said the call for production investment in the United States, the central market for artificial intelligence, may indicate that memory semiconductors remain in short supply despite debate over whether the chip market is nearing a peak.
Micron said Wednesday it will expand investment in U.S. fabrication plants and technology to more than $250 billion by 2035. The company has set a goal of producing 40% of its DRAM in the United States and will move up part of its New York fabrication plant construction schedule.
Lutnick’s message that he also wants Samsung and SK Hynix to invest locally is fueling expectations that the surge in semiconductor demand could continue for some time.
Some stock market analysts have recently raised concerns that large artificial intelligence data center operators, known as hyperscalers, could slow the pace of investment. But industry officials still expect supply and demand to begin moving toward balance no earlier than 2028.
Others see Lutnick’s remarks as a sign that the U.S. government is reviving pressure for local investment after a quieter period. The comments came one day before SK Hynix’s Nasdaq listing of American depositary receipts, prompting speculation that Washington may want funds raised through the listing to be invested in the United States rather than South Korea.
Since 2025, the United States has imposed reciprocal tariffs and temporary import surcharges. Semiconductors are currently excluded, but the U.S. government has suggested it could impose tariffs of up to 100% on all semiconductor imports. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump pressured memory chipmakers to invest in the United States, saying companies that do not build plants domestically could face 100% tariffs.
With Samsung and SK Hynix recently announcing a combined 800 trillion won investment plan in South Korea, industry observers said pressure for additional U.S. investment could grow. Lutnick’s latest comments were seen as moving in that direction.
Similar views have emerged overseas. Japan’s Nikkei recently said that because Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together account for about 60% of the global memory market, the U.S. administration could raise monopoly concerns and demand relocation or investment in the United States.
— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI
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Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260710010003905
South Korean computer chip maker SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US.
The company, a key supplier to artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia, said on Thursday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each. The shares are set to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq.
In May, SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country, lifted by the boom in demand for AI chips.
Its share price has more than tripled in South Korea this year, which along with Samsung Electronics has helped boost the benchmark Kospi index by more than 70% over the same period.
SK Hynix is one of the world’s leading memory chip makers. The industry has been given a major boost by the hundreds of billions being spent on AI.
Shares in rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron have more than doubled in recent months.
The US listing gives SK Hynix easier access to huge amounts of potential investment from the world’s biggest economy, which has fewer barriers than South Korea, said Seoul National University finance professor Jaewon Choi.
Traders are closely watching the listing as a “yardstick to test the water” for whether investor enthusiasm for memory chip makers will continue, Choi said.
The AI boom has triggered a rush of companies raising money on the the stock market.
In June, GrokAI owner SpaceX became the world’s biggest ever listing as it raised $85.7bn.
Meanwhile, AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI are preparing to go public, with valuations of more $1tn.
Demand for SK Hynix’s offering was reportedly over seven times more than the number of shares available, highlighting the strong investor appetite for a key company in the AI supply chain.
Each American depositary share is equivalent to a tenth of a Seoul-traded common share, SK Hynix said.
The offering gives US investors a way to buy SK Hynix shares without having to trade via an overseas stock exchange.
The company has pledged major investments to develop South Korea’s chip making and AI capabilities in the coming years.
The country’s government is likely to be counting on SK Hynix’s US listing to raise funds that can support the firm’s domestic investments, said Hanyang University business professor Yun Youngjin.
But the Nasdaq listing carries some risks, especially if investors move money towards the US and away from South Korea’s stock market, Yun added.
In June, the country’s government unveiled plans for more than $880bn of investments in partnership with SK Hynix and Samsung.
Both SK Hynix and Samsung have stock market valuations of more that $1tn, joining growing group of firms which includes tech giants Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google-owner Alphabet.
South Korean chipmaker SK hynix, known for its high-bandwidth memory chips, is preparing to raise roughly $28 billion (€24.5bn) on Wall Street, a sum surpassed only by SpaceX’s record flotation last month.
It is an extraordinary outcome for a firm that once survived on job cuts and asset sales.
Pricing is due on Thursday, with trading expected to begin on Friday under the ticker SKHY.
SK hynix is issuing 17.79 million new shares in the form of American depositary receipts (ADRs), each representing a tenth of a Seoul-listed share, and cornerstone investors including Baillie Gifford and funds run by Coatue Management have signalled interest in up to $7 billion (€6.1bn) worth of stock.
The target was trimmed from an initial $29.6 billion (€25.9bn) after the shares slipped in recent weeks.
ADRs are certificates traded on a US exchange that stand in for shares held abroad, letting American investors buy into a foreign company without dealing in a foreign currency or market.
Unlike a conventional flotation, this is not SK hynix’s stock market debut. Its primary listing remains on Seoul’s Kospi index, and the Nasdaq offering simply opens a second, dollar-denominated avenue for investors to gain exposure.
The listing arrives with the company already worth more than $1 trillion (€876bn), a threshold also crossed by rivals Samsung Electronics and Micron, after a surge of more than 200% this year.
Proceeds will fund new fabrication plants, chiefly a vast cluster in Yongin, plus its first US packaging facility in Indiana.
The move is partly about valuation. Korean-listed chipmakers have long traded at a discount to American peers, and a Nasdaq listing offers a chance to close that gap.
The AI build-out has transformed the industry’s economics.
As hyperscalers pour hundreds of billions into data centres, memory prices have exploded, with DRAM up 44% and NAND flash up 53% in a single quarter, according to Citi Research, and manufacturers have already sold most of their 2026 production.
SK hynix reported first-quarter revenue above 50 trillion won (€29bn) and operating margins north of 70%, figures unheard of for a chipmaker, and commands about 60% of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market, according to Counterpoint Research.
Yet the timing is delicate.
Memory has always been a brutally cyclical business. The AI-driven rally that transformed SK hynix has begun to wobble as chip stocks sold off sharply across Asia last week, and Samsung lost more than $100 billion (€87.5bn) in market value despite posting a record profit.
Investors are increasingly asking whether the vast sums being spent on AI infrastructure will earn a return, a question that the Bank for International Settlements raised in late June when it warned that the boom could seed the next financial crash.
Those concerns are not new for SK hynix.
SK hynix traces its roots to Gukdo Construction, founded in 1949, which moved into electronics in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics, an arm of the Hyundai empire.
The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s brought disaster. Under an IMF-backed restructuring of the Korean economy, Hyundai absorbed rival LG’s semiconductor business, creating a giant that promptly buckled under its own debts.
Salvation came in stages.
Renamed Hynix Semiconductor in 2001, a contraction of “high” and “electronics”, the firm cut jobs, shed assets and split from Hyundai. Profits returned, but the violent swings of the DRAM market left it perpetually exposed.
Starved of capital, it was rescued in 2012 by the telecoms conglomerate SK Group, becoming SK hynix. The takeover proved decisive. SK Group poured money into high-bandwidth memory, then a costly and unprofitable technology that few believed in.
Today it has become the scarcest commodity in AI computing. And the firm employs nearly 46,900 people.
Additional sources • AFP
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Samples of SK hynix’s 12-stack HBM4E memory chips. The chipmaker has delivered samples of the next-generation high-bandwidth memory products to its major customers. Photo by SK hynix
June 18 (UPI) — South Korea’s SK hynix said Thursday that the company has shipped samples of its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, or HBM4E, to major customers.
SK hynix provided samples of the 12-stack HBM4E, which it says shows improvements in both performance and power efficiency, on schedule, according to the tech giant.
The firm noted that the new product delivers a data-processing speed of up to 16Gbps per pin while enhancing power efficiency by more than 20% compared with previous-generation models.
The corporation stated that the HBM4E features an upgraded interface and optimized architecture, which reduce data-transfer latency while ensuring reliable performance in high-bandwidth environments.
SK hynix expected the improvements to enable clients to process data more efficiently in AI data centers and large-scale computing systems.
Amid the AI boom, high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, has emerged as one of the most sought-after semiconductor products. SK hynix and its local rival, Samsung Electronics, are global leaders in the HBM supply chain.
“SK hynix has laid the foundation to strengthen its AI leadership with HBM4E based on its market-leading technological capabilities and manufacturing expertise,” SK hynix Chief Development Officer Ahn Hyun said in a statement.
“Through close collaboration with our partners, we will deliver the value needed in the market while reinforcing our technology leadership as a full-stack AI memory creator,” he added.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, right, visits the SK hynix booth at Computex 2026 with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won on Tuesday. Photo courtesy of SK hynix
June 2 (Asia Today) — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the SK hynix booth at Computex 2026 in Taipei on Tuesday, meeting SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won for a second straight day as the companies deepen their artificial intelligence partnership.
Huang, who met privately with Chey on Monday, examined SK hynix’s major memory products and wrote “Please Make More” on an HBM4E wafer displayed at the booth.
Chey also signaled that SK plans to expand production. He said the group aims to double wafer production capacity within five years as demand for memory chips is expected to surge.
Huang toured the booth with Chey and SK hynix executives. He signed the HBM4E wafer with the message “Please Make More” and wrote “LOVE SOCAMM” on a 192GB SOCAMM product.
SK hynix currently supplies Nvidia with its latest high-bandwidth memory, including sixth-generation HBM4, as well as high-performance low-power LPDDR5X memory. Huang said in his GTC Taipei keynote Monday that Nvidia will begin full-scale production of its next-generation AI accelerator, Vera Rubin, in the second half of this year.
As AI demand increases and memory supply shortages deepen, Chey said SK is moving quickly to expand production.
“The memory bottleneck is expected to continue until 2030,” Chey told reporters at the SK hynix booth. “We are pushing forward at full speed to expand production capacity.”
“Building new memory fabs requires enormous investment and takes at least three years,” he said. “Despite these challenges, we plan to double wafer production capacity over the next five years.”
It was the first time SK Group publicly presented a specific goal of doubling its overall production capacity within five years. SK hynix is making large-scale investments to strengthen production capacity, including projects at its M15X and P&T7 facilities in Cheongju, the Yongin semiconductor cluster and an advanced packaging plant in the United States.
— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI
© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.
Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260602010000823
Wolterk/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
SK Hynix (HXSCL) plans to double its memory-chip wafer production capacity over the next five years as it works to address soaring demand for AI-related memory chips.
Chairman Chey Tae-won told reporters in Taipei that the company is responding to