Back to today’s briefing

Story perspectives

SK Hynix Approves $38B for Yongin Y2, Cheongju M17

8/14/2026

47 10 Full Breakdown

Summary

SK Hynix Expansion

SK Hynix pledged a $720 billion fab expansion, approving a $38 billion tranche for Yongin Y2 DRAM/HBM and Cheongju M17 NAND plants.
Construction starts 2027, with cleanrooms running 2028 and 2029.
Q2 profit was 60.54 trillion won, revenue rose 256.8% YoY.
July ADR raised $26.5 billion, briefly lifting market cap above $1 trillion.
SK Hynix owned 58% of the HBM market in Q1 2026, while a union of 2,400 workers demanded cash bonuses instead of stock.

Summary

SK Hynix Blocked

U.S. export controls block SK Hynix from selling top-tier HBM chips to China, prompting a market shift.
Chinese startup CXMT debuted in Shanghai, signaling China’s push into high-bandwidth memory.
SK Hynix signed a $500 billion pact with Nvidia to co-develop next-gen memory for data-center AI chips, with SK Telecom joining by 2027.
Executives say custom HBM for AI chips will soften the memory market’s boom-and-bust swings.

History

Historical Context

After Hyundai’s 2001 memory-price collapse and the 2012 SK Group acquisition that renamed Hynix SK Hynix, the company expanded into high-bandwidth memory, launching the world’s first 12-layer HBM chips in September 2024 for Nvidia’s AI GPUs. By Q2 2025 SK Hynix held about 38 % of global DRAM capacity, positioning it at the center of today’s AI-chip supply chain amid U.S. export restrictions.

1 of 3

SK Hynix Expansion

SK Hynix pledged a $720 billion fab expansion, approving a $38 billion tranche for Yongin Y2 DRAM/HBM and Cheongju M17 NAND plants.
Construction starts 2027, with cleanrooms running 2028 and 2029.
Q2 profit was 60.54 trillion won, revenue rose 256.8% YoY.
July ADR raised $26.5 billion, briefly lifting market cap above $1 trillion.
SK Hynix owned 58% of the HBM market in Q1 2026, while a union of 2,400 workers demanded cash bonuses instead of stock.

1 / 3