SK Hynix Crosses $1 Trillion Market Cap
Benzinga reported Tuesday that SK Hynix has breached the $1 trillion market cap threshold, cementing its place among the world’s most valuable publicly traded companies. The South Korean memory chipmaker’s stock closed Wednesday up 9.3%, after touching an intraday gain of nearly 15%. That single session lifted the company’s total valuation to a record 1,680 trillion won, equivalent to roughly $1.12 trillion.
A Milestone Session on the KOSPI
The rally was broad enough to push South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index to an all-time high. SK Hynix, a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips to NVIDIA, now ranks as the 14th-largest public company in the world by market value. Financial commentary account The Kobeissi Letter described the speed of the company’s ascent as “truly incredible.” The move follows a similarly dramatic run higher for rival Samsung Electronics, which crossed the $1 trillion mark earlier this month. South Korea is now the first country to have produced two separate $1 trillion chipmakers in the memory segment.
What Is Driving the Memory Surge
Demand for high-bandwidth memory has accelerated sharply alongside the broader build-out of AI data centres. Hyperscalers and cloud providers are racing to secure chip supply, tightening availability across the market. SK Hynix has been a primary beneficiary, given its position as a leading producer of the advanced HBM3E chips used in NVIDIA’s most powerful accelerators. Micron Technology has also participated in the rally, having crossed the same $1 trillion threshold in the weeks prior.
Analysts See the Boom Extending to 2028
Kim Young-gun, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities in Seoul, told Reuters that memory chip demand is expected to outpace supply through 2028, keeping average selling prices elevated for an extended period. That forecast prompted Mirae to lift its price targets substantially, raising its SK Hynix target by 18.8% and its Samsung target by 14.6%. The projection reinforces a view held across much of the analyst community that the current cycle has further to run, driven by persistent AI infrastructure investment rather than a short-term demand spike.
South Korea’s Chipmakers Step Into the Spotlight
The twin milestones for Samsung and SK Hynix signal a broader shift in how markets are valuing memory. For years, logic chips and processors attracted the premium multiples. Now, with AI workloads demanding vast quantities of fast, dense memory, the sector is commanding comparable attention. South Korea’s chipmakers find themselves at the centre of one of the most consequential technology build-outs in decades, with supply constraints giving them considerable pricing power heading into the back half of the decade.
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