For years, the safest bet for ambitious young Koreans was landing a job at Samsung, but a fresh survey says SK Hynix now tops the wish list.
The chipmaker is thriving by dominating one of the global economy’s most critical components: high-bandwidth memory chips that power AI development.
SK Hynix has outmuscled better-known rivals, including Samsung, to capture more than half the global HBM market, enabling the high-throughput flow of AI data.
It is Nvidia’s primary HBM supplier and was recently selected by Microsoft for its proprietary AI chips.
Shortages of HBM, plus less powerful Dram and NAND, are pushing prices up, leaving SK Hynix raking it in with fourth-quarter revenues 66 per cent higher year on year. Its operating margins hit 58 per cent, which is posher than even TSMC, and its market capitalisation has jumped 340 per cent in 12 months to Won640tn ($438bn) (€368bn).
The company is planning a larger AI push, moving beyond pure chipmaking by committing $10bn of capital to become an “AI solutions firm”.
SK Group chair Chey Tae-won has described AI as a “fourth quantum leap” for the sprawling chaebol that owns SK Hynix.
SK’s growth story runs from its 1980 acquisition of Korea Oil Corporation to its 1994 acquisition of Korea Mobile Telecommunications, later renamed SK Telecom, which became the group’s cash cow.
The third major move was acquiring SK Hynix, but it seemed like a fantasy for most of its early years, after it was established under the Hyundai chaebol in 1983.
Hynix remained a creditor-owned “zombie” for years following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the early 2000s Dram glut.
Suitors drifted in and out, including Micron, which offered $3.2bn in 2002 but would not swallow Hynix’s $6bn debt, and the board binned the deal. SK Group finally stepped in in 2011, paying Won3.4tn (€2.0bn) to end what was known as “the Curse of Hynix”.
Platform 9¾, director Lee In-sook said there was panic inside SK Telecom when the takeover was floated.
“They said, ‘If we take over that company, we will fail. We will only pour money into it and then we will go under too’.”
Two months after the deal, Chey was charged with embezzlement and later served more than two years in prison before a presidential pardon. He still made a smart call by appointing longtime Hynix engineer Park Sung-wook as chief executive, and staff trusted his technical chops.
Lee In-sook said Park’s background meant “you didn’t have to explain anything and you couldn’t lie to him.”
Park, who stepped down in 2019, prioritised long-term research over short-term numbers and bet on HBM when most of the industry shrugged.
HBM’s first outing was in an absurdly expensive graphics card for gamers, but Hynix ploughed on, growing R&D spending by an average of 14 per cent a year between 2010 and 2024.
Chip War, author Chris Miller says, “AI workloads require high volumes of memory . . . it wasn’t until the launch of ChatGPT spurred an explosion in demand for AI servers that Hynix’s multiyear bet finally paid off,”
Hynix revenue has climbed from Won44.6tn (€25.7bn) to Won97.1tn (€55.9bn) in the past three years.
SK Hynix is also entangled in geopolitics, including U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to build far more chips in the U.S.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick warned Korean chipmakers: “Everyone who wants to build memory has two choices: they can pay a 100 per cent tariff, or they can build in America.”
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung downplayed it: “If a 100 per cent tariff were imposed, it would likely result in US semiconductor prices doubling,” he told reporters.
