Aggressive leveraged bets on major South Korean tech companies like SK Hynix and Samsung are causing volatility and shaking the country's market.

SK hynix posted its highest-ever research and development spending last year, approaching the 7 trillion won ($4.66 billion) mark as the company accelerates investment in next-generation artificial intelligence memory technologies. According to an audit report disclosed through the Financial Supervisory Service’s electronic disclosure system on Sunday, SK hynix spent a total of 6.73 trillion won on R&D in 2025. The figure marks a sharp increase of 35.9 percent from the 4.95 trillion won spent a

Applied Materials has announced strategic partnerships with Micron and SK Hynix to advance the development and production of memory chips specifically designed for artificial intelligence applications.

SK Innovation announced plans to invest US$380 million in SK Hynix's artificial intelligence (AI) affiliate based in the United States, signaling a strategic move into the AI sector.

Karnage: Korea Kospi Suffers Biggest Crash In History - Is It A Buying Opportunity? Yesterday we discussed the dramatic move in Korean stocks, which saw the Kospi tumble by 7.4%, its biggest drop since the August 2024 carry trade unwind, and which put a dramatic halt to the historic meltup in the country's stock market driven almost entirely by memory (Samsung and SK Hynix) and semiconductor stocks. However, as we noted earlier this week when we pointed out the unprecedented pi...

SK hynix and Sandisk have agreed to jointly pursue global standardization of High Bandwidth Flash, a next-generation memory technology designed to improve artificial intelligence inference systems, the companies said Thursday. The two chipmakers launched the HBF Spec Standardization Consortium at Sandisk’s headquarters in California, announcing plans to form a dedicated workstream under the Open Compute Project, the world’s largest open data center technology initiative. The workstream will focu

SK Hynix has announced plans to invest $15 billion into the construction of new semiconductor manufacturing facilities in South Korea.

SK Hynix Boss Pledges to Boost Output of AI Memory Chips  Bloomberg

Despite global equity market volatility due to Middle East tensions, analysts are raising price targets for South Korea's leading chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, anticipating strong demand.

A recent survey in South Korea revealed that SK hynix Inc. is the most preferred company among job seekers, a sentiment attributed to the chipmaker's strong earnings amidst the artificial intelligence boom.

SK Hynix spent 6.7 trillion won on research and development last year, driven by the booming demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) technology.

Applied Materials has entered into a long-term research and development partnership with SK hynix, aiming to collaborate on advancements in semiconductor technology.

SK Innovation plans to invest US$380 million in SK Hynix's artificial intelligence affiliate in the United States.

South Korea has warned its semiconductor giants, including Samsung and SK Hynix, about potential disruptions from the US-Israel-Iran conflict.

Samsung and SK Hynix are credited with driving the Korea Benchmark index to break past the 6000 mark, indicating strong market performance.

Google's AI boss Demis Hassabis said the memory market came down to "a few suppliers of a few key components." PONTUS LUNDAHL/TT NEWS AGENCY/AFP via Getty Images Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that the "whole supply chain" for memory chips is constrained. "You need a lot of chips to be able to experiment on new ideas," Hassabis told CNBC. Google produces its own TPUs, but Hassabis said that there were still "key components" that were supply-constrained. The memory shortage takes no prisoners. Even Google isn't immune. AI companies are duking it out for greater and greater quantities of memory chips. The problem? The industry is heavily supply-constrained. Costs have skyrocketed, products have been tied up, and some companies — especially those in consumer electronics — are increasing prices. On the AI front, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told CNBC that physical challenges were "constraining a lot of deployment." Google sees "so much more demand" for Gemini and its other models than it could serve, he said. "Also, it does constrain a little bit the research," Hassabis said. "You need a lot of chips to be able to experiment on new ideas at a big enough scale that you can actually see if they're going to work." Researchers want chips, whether they work at Google, Meta, OpenAI, or other Big Tech companies, and memory is a key component. Mark Zuckerberg said that AI researchers demanded two things beyond money: the fewest number of people reporting to them, and the most chips possible. Hassabis said that wherever there was a capacity constraint, there was a "choke point." "The whole supply chain is kind of strained," Hassabis said. "We're lucky, because we have our own TPUs, so we have our own chip designs." Google has long built TPUs — Tensor Processing Units — for internal use. The company also leases them to external customers through its cloud, which has also put Nvidia on edge. But even access to their own TPUs won't save Google from having to navigate the highly competitive memory market. "It still, in the end, actually comes down to a few suppliers of a few key components," Hassabis said. Three suppliers dominate memory chip production: Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. These companies are struggling to meet demand for chips from AI hyperscalers without dropping their longtime electronics customers. It doesn't help that AI companies mainly want a different type of memory chip than PC manufacturers do. Large language model producers want HBM (high-bandwidth memory) chips. Don't expect Google's spending on AI infrastructure and chips to go down anytime soon. On its fourth-quarter earnings call, the company projected capital expenditures of $175 billion to $185 billion for 2026. Read the original article on Business Insider

SK hynix has overtaken Samsung Electronics as the most preferred employer among South Korean job seekers, underscoring the rising appeal of semiconductor companies amid the global artificial intelligence boom. According to a survey released by job platform Saramin on Monday, 20 percent of the 2,304 respondents selected SK hynix as their top employer of choice. It marks the first time the memory chipmaker has surpassed Samsung Electronics, which had held the top spot since the survey began, Saram

SK hynix beats Samsung as most preferred company for job seekers: survey  Yonhap News Agency

The world suddenly cannot get enough memory chips. Artificial intelligence data centers are consuming unprecedented volumes of DRAM, pushing prices higher and squeezing supply for everything from smartphones to laptops. The two companies at the center of that boom, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, earned more than 72.1 trillion won ($48.7 billion) in operating profit last year. And yet the shortage continues. The question seems obvious. If demand is booming and profits are soaring, why not simp

Applied Materials and SK Hynix have announced a partnership focused on developing next-generation memory solutions specifically designed for artificial intelligence applications.

SK hynix said Tuesday it has developed a next-generation 16-gigabit LPDDR6 DRAM built on its 10-nanometer-class sixth-generation 1c process, designed to support on-device artificial intelligence in mobile devices. LPDDR, or low-power double data rate memory, is widely used in smartphones and tablets because it operates at a lower voltage to reduce power consumption. The company recently completed what it said was the world’s first certification for a 1c-based LPDDR6 product after unveiling the c

SanDisk is partnering with SK Hynix to establish a global standard for high-bandwidth flash memory specifically designed for AI inference applications.

SK hynix announced on Wednesday an additional investment of 21.6 trillion won ($15.1 billion) to build its first semiconductor fabrication plant at the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, which will serve a

Nvidia's CEO marked his 63rd birthday with a strawberry cake from Paris Baguette. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images;Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images The cake Jensen Huang had for his birthday is easier to find than Nvidia's GPUs. Huang, who turned 63, celebrated his birthday with a strawberry soft cream cake from Paris Baguette. He celebrated at a fried chicken joint with about 30 engineers behind SK hynix's DRAM and HBM. Nvidia's GPUs may be hard to snag, but Jensen Huang's birthd...

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are locked in a race to mass-produce sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, but Chinese rivals are making gains elsewhere — flooding the legacy DRAM market with chips priced at roughly half the going rate. According to industry sources on Friday, China’s top DRAM manufacturer CXMT has been offering older-generation DDR4 chips at about half the prevailing market rate. The move comes as global supply shortages have driven prices sharply higher, allowing the compan