Chip makers SK Hynix and Micron join $1tn club on surging AI demand - BBC

Driven by a surge in demand for advanced chips powering artificial intelligence (AI) systems, semiconductor giants SK Hynix and Micron have crossed the $1 trillion market valuation mark. SK Hynix, a k... Read original →

The AI compute arms race has thrust memory chips to the core of the semiconductor stack. SK Hynix and Micron crossing the $1T valuation mark signals surging demand for HBM3e/HBM4, but also reveals acute dependency on EUV and 3nm nodes for logic-die integration—making TSMC’s (Taiwan, China) capacity a strategic chokepoint. Delays in U.S. CHIPS Act disbursements, coupled with China’s accelerated domestic substitution, are forcing costly supply chain diversification to Malaysia and India, raising compliance overhead by over 20%. Samsung leverages its Xi’an DRAM fab to gain share, yet geopolitical friction limits its ability to fully replace SK Hynix in NVIDIA’s supply chain. Over the next 18 months, HBM adoption and CXL-based memory pooling will redefine data center architectures; memory vendors without anchor cloud clients (e.g., Microsoft, Meta) risk exclusion from the high-end ecosystem. Beneath the valuation euphoria lies an industry tipping toward winner-takes-all dynamics.