SK hynix

Who they are

SK hynix started in 1983 as Hyundai Electronics Industries, spun out as independent Hynix Semiconductor in 2001 after the Asian financial crisis forced Hyundai to shed the business, and was acquired by SK Group in 2012, taking its current name. For most of that history it was the perennial number two to Samsung in commodity DRAM. High-bandwidth memory changed that: SK hynix was the first company to mass-produce multiple HBM generations, including HBM3 and HBM3E, and that early lead has compounded into a dominant position just as HBM went from a niche product to the single most contested piece of silicon in AI computing.

What they do

SK hynix manufactures DRAM, NAND flash, and HBM — the stacked memory that sits directly beside an AI GPU's logic die and feeds it data fast enough to keep it busy. The company held a 56.4% revenue share of the global HBM market in Q1 2026 according to IDC, with some shipment-based estimates putting its share as high as 62%. In July 2026, SK hynix began volume production of 12-layer HBM4 chips that have already passed Nvidia's qualification testing for the upcoming Vera Rubin platform, with deliveries set to accelerate sharply from September. Analysts estimate SK hynix could capture 50–70% of Nvidia's total HBM4 allocation.

How SK hynix makes money

Memory chip sales, increasingly under multi-year supply agreements rather than spot pricing. Q1 2026 revenue reached KRW 52.58 trillion with operating profit of KRW 37.61 trillion — a 72% operating margin, an extraordinary figure for what used to be a commodity hardware business. On July 10, 2026, SK hynix completed a Nasdaq listing via American Depositary Receipts, raising roughly $26.5 billion in what was reported as the largest US listing by a foreign company in history, giving the company a second, dollar-denominated pool of capital to fund the capacity expansion HBM4 demand requires.

The bigger trend

Goldman Sachs has projected SK hynix will hold onto dominant HBM3/HBM3E share through at least 2026, sustaining an overall HBM market share above 50%. But HBM4 is the real inflection point the whole industry is watching: it's the product generation where Samsung is trying to force its way back in after slipping to third place, and where Micron is racing to close the gap using its own in-house base-die design. Whoever leads HBM4 qualification and yield essentially decides who captures the next multi-year profit cycle in AI memory.

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