SK Hynix Invests 1.3 Trillion KRW in AI Semiconductor Packaging to Solidify Leadership in HBM

SK Hynix plans to invest more than $1 billion (approximately 1.33 trillion KRW) this year in advanced semiconductor packaging processes, Bloomberg reported on the 7th (local time), citing Vice President Lee Kang-wook. This is to meet the demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a key component in artificial intelligence (AI) development.

This investment underscores that HBM is the core and most demanded component of AI memory semiconductors. SK Hynix aims to reduce semiconductor power consumption and enhance performance through technological innovation, solidifying its leading position in the HBM market.

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Although SK Hynix has not disclosed its spending budget for this year, the industry estimates it to be around 14 trillion KRW. In other words, the company is investing about one-tenth of its total expenditure in improving packaging processes, demonstrating that HBM is the company's top priority.

Vice President Lee stated, "The first 50 years of the semiconductor industry were about chip design and manufacturing itself, but the next 50 years will be all about post-processing, that is, packaging." He contributed to pioneering a new method of packaging the 3rd generation HBM2E, which played a significant role in SK Hynix becoming a customer of Nvidia at the end of 2019.

Sanjiv Rana, an analyst at CLSA Securities Korea, commented, "SK Hynix's management had excellent insight into the direction of the semiconductor industry and was fully prepared. SK Hynix seized the opportunity when it came, but Samsung Electronics was napping."

SK Hynix's corporate value rose to 119 trillion KRW after being selected as the supplier of HBM for Nvidia's standard-setting AI accelerators. Since early 2023, its stock price has surged nearly 120%, making it the second-largest market capitalization in Korea. It is also regarded as having surpassed Samsung Electronics and US-based Micron Technology in technological capabilities.

Samsung Electronics, fiercely chasing SK Hynix, announced on the 26th of last month that it developed a 12-layer stacked DRAM semiconductor and the industry's largest capacity 36GB 5th generation HBM3E technology. On the same day, US-based Micron also attracted market attention by announcing the start of mass production of 24GB, 8-stack HBM3E to be included in Nvidia's H200 tensor core units.

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