SK Hynix AI Data Center Spending Drives 12% Share Surge
SK Hynix shares jumped 12% on Monday as AI data center spending commitments from major US tech firms sent foreign buyers rushing in. The surge reflects growing confidence that AI infrastructure investment remains firmly on track, and that SK Hynix sits at the centre of it.
Samsung Electronics lagged behind. The bigger rival faces the risk of a potential strike by unionised workers demanding a larger share of AI-driven profits. The contrast between the two Korean chipmakers is sharpening by the week.
SK Hynix’s momentum runs deeper than a single-day rally. The company posted a record first-quarter operating profit of 37.61 trillion won. Its market capitalisation also surpassed 1,000 trillion won, with shares breaking through 1.4 million won. Earnings momentum is expected to hold as AI infrastructure investment expands.
High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, drives those numbers. SK Hynix is the world’s leading HBM supplier, the specialised chip essential to AI data center workloads. Rising memory prices and surging AI demand powered the record results.
The AI boom shows no signs of cooling either. As AI evolves from model training to agentic AI, performing real-time inference continuously, memory demand keeps climbing. “The importance of memory has become greater than ever,” an SK Hynix executive said on an earnings call.
Hyperscalers are fuelling that demand. Meta Platforms and Amazon are each spending hundreds of billions on AI hardware. SK Hynix benefits directly through its HBM lead, which is critical for running AI models alongside Nvidia accelerators. That pipeline shows no signs of slowing.
SK Hynix is also investing to stay ahead. The company plans to invest $10 billion in a new US entity focused on AI-related memory and infrastructure. It also plans to supply samples of its seventh-generation HBM4E in the second half of this year, with mass production set for 2027.
Competition is, however, intensifying. Samsung is preparing next-generation HBM4 chips for Nvidia’s platforms. That move could trim SK Hynix’s HBM share to around 53%, per research forecasts. Still, analysts stay bullish. UBS predicts SK Hynix will capture roughly 70% of the HBM4 market for Nvidia’s next Rubin platform in 2026.
As AI data center spending accelerates, SK Hynix remains the memory industry’s most critical supplier, and investors are clearly taking notice.
