Key Highlights

  • SK Hynix closed up 5.6% on Monday, lifting its market capitalisation to 2,080.4 trillion won ($1.35 trillion), narrowly above Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930) at 2,066.7 trillion won excluding preferred shares, ending Samsung's reign at the top that began in 2000.
  • SK Hynix captured 61% of the global HBM market by 2025, far ahead of Samsung's 17% and Micron's 21%, with shares up more than 340% this year as AI infrastructure demand transforms specialised memory from a commodity into a critical strategic component.
  • SK Hynix is planning a US listing on the Nasdaq, a move that would broaden its investor base and raise its profile further among global funds.

SK Hynix closed up 5.6% on Monday, lifting its market capitalisation to 2,080.4 trillion won ($1.35 trillion) and overtaking Samsung Electronics at 2,066.7 trillion won excluding preferred shares. Samsung said any calculation of its market capitalisation should include preferred shares, which would bring the total to 2,246.4 trillion won and keep it ahead on that basis.

The milestone caps one of the most remarkable corporate turnarounds in South Korean history. In 2002, then-Hynix Semiconductor was on the verge of being sold to Micron (NASDAQ: MU), having been crippled by debt accumulated during an aggressive expansion drive. Its shares plunged as low as 135 won in 2003, leaving it viewed as a penny stock among investors. The company spent nearly a decade under creditor control before SK Group acquired it and began the strategic repositioning that produced Monday's valuation milestone.

Analysts attribute SK Hynix's central role in the global AI ecosystem to its counter-cyclical decision to continue investing in high-bandwidth memory during a severe industry downturn in 2023, when conventional memory producers were cutting capital expenditure. In 2023, the downturn pushed SK Hynix to report an annual operating loss of 7.73 trillion won. It recovered sharply as AI infrastructure investment from Microsoft, Alphabet's Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and Meta (NASDAQ:META) accelerated, reporting a record annual operating profit of 23.5 trillion won in 2024.

Unlike conventional memory products, HBM chips are tightly integrated with AI processors including Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA) GPU accelerators, creating significantly higher barriers to entry and giving suppliers greater pricing power than commodity DRAM or NAND markets allow. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won captured the strategic shift in a book published earlier this year: "In the past, it did not matter whether memory came from Hynix, Samsung or Micron. They were interchangeable commodity products. HBM is different. If SK Hynix's HBM is replaced with another product, the AI system may not function properly."

Bank of America estimates SK Hynix's monthly DRAM output will reach approximately 589,000 wafers this year against Samsung's roughly 691,000, but projects SK Hynix will expand DRAM output by about 38% between 2025 and 2028 compared with approximately 17.5% growth at Samsung, narrowing the production gap to less than 10% by 2028 from around 23% in 2025.