22.06.2026
2 min
12
SK Hynix shares continue to surge amid the global artificial intelligence boom. On Monday, the company overtook Samsung Electronics in market capitalization for the first time, becoming South Korea’s most valuable publicly traded company.
The company’s rapid growth has been driven by soaring demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips, a critical component in modern artificial intelligence systems. Today, SK Hynix is one of the leading suppliers of these advanced memory solutions to major technology companies, including Nvidia and Google.
During Monday’s trading session, SK Hynix shares climbed 5.7%, pushing the company’s market capitalization to 2.0825 quadrillion won, or approximately $1.35 trillion. By comparison, Samsung Electronics gained just 0.4%, bringing its market value to 2.0813 quadrillion won.
The milestone highlights how dramatically the semiconductor industry is changing. Memory chips, once viewed as relatively standard components, have become essential infrastructure for powering ChatGPT, generative AI platforms, and other advanced artificial intelligence models.
Unlike Samsung Electronics, whose business spans logic chips, consumer electronics, and several other sectors, SK Hynix has remained heavily focused on memory products. That specialization has allowed the company to capitalize on the explosive growth in AI-related demand.
“The emergence of customized AI memory has fundamentally changed the economics of the industry and enabled SK Hynix to establish itself as the market leader,” said Kim Sun-woo, senior analyst at Meritz Securities.
For SK Hynix, the achievement marks the culmination of one of South Korea’s most remarkable corporate turnarounds. Back in 2002, the company, then known as Hynix Semiconductor, was on the verge of being sold to Micron after accumulating massive debt during an aggressive expansion period. The deal ultimately collapsed, leaving the company under creditor control for nearly a decade.
The situation became so severe that by 2003 its share price had fallen to just 135 won, leading many investors to dismiss it as a low-value stock with little growth potential.
In the years that followed, SK Hynix experienced the same boom-and-bust cycles that have long characterized the global memory market. As recently as 2023, a sharp downturn in memory prices resulted in an operating loss of 7.73 trillion won.
Just one year later, however, the picture changed dramatically. Massive investments in artificial intelligence by companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta fueled unprecedented demand for high-performance memory chips. As a result, SK Hynix reported a record operating profit of 23.5 trillion won in 2024.
Since the beginning of the year, the company’s shares have surged by more than 340%, making SK Hynix one of the biggest winners of the global AI race and allowing it to surpass not only Samsung Electronics but also U.S.-based Micron in market value.
