SK Hynix Tops Samsung in Market Value on AI Chip Demand

On Monday SK Hynix overtook Samsung Electronics to become South Korea’s most valuable listed company after its shares rose 5.7 percent. The company’s market capitalisation reached 2,082.5 trillion won as of 03:47 GMT. Samsung’s shares rose 0.4 percent, giving it a market value of 2,081.3 trillion won excluding preferred shares. Samsung argued that preferred shares should be included, which would raise its value to about 2,252 trillion won.

The gain followed a surge in demand for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, chips used with AI processors in data centres and large language model infrastructure. HBM stacks memory chips vertically to speed data transfer and reduce power use. HBM is closely integrated with AI processors, which can make replacing one supplier’s HBM with another supplier’s product difficult.

SK Hynix supplies HBM to customers including Nvidia and Google. Heavy data-centre investment by Microsoft, Google and Meta increased orders for HBM and other memory products, boosting SK Hynix’s sales and share price.

By 2025 SK Hynix held about 61 percent of the global HBM market, compared with roughly 17 percent for Samsung Electronics and 21 percent for Micron. SK Hynix’s shares have climbed more than 340 percent this year, making it the world’s most valuable memory chipmaker.

The company was founded in 1983 as a unit of Hyundai and later became part of SK Group. In the early 2000s then-Hynix faced heavy debt and came under creditor control for nearly a decade, with shares trading as low as 135 won in 2003. A downturn in the memory market led to an annual operating loss of 7.73 trillion won in 2023, and the firm returned to profit in 2024 with a record operating profit of 23.5 trillion won.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won wrote in a recent book: “What I really wanted to accomplish when we acquired Hynix was to transform it from a commodity memory producer into a mainstream semiconductor company whose products are indispensable. HBM is different. If SK Hynix’s HBM is replaced with another product, the AI system may not function properly. What used to be a peripheral component has become a core component.”

Unlike SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics has a broader product mix that includes logic chips, smartphones and televisions. Samsung had been South Korea’s most valuable listed company since 2000.