Intel hires former SK hynix chief Lee Seok-hee to lead advanced packaging - The Korea Herald

Intel has appointed former SK Hynix and SK On CEO Lee Seok-hee as a senior vice president in its foundry business, focusing on advanced packaging, system integration, and backend manufacturing. This m... Read original →

Intel’s recruitment of ex-SK hynix CEO Lee Seok-hee is a high-stakes bet on advanced packaging as its lifeline in AI competition. Lee’s HBM expertise will accelerate EMIB-T and HBI ramp, directly tackling the memory bottleneck in AI accelerators. This move pressures TSMC to expedite CoWoS capacity and may force Samsung to reassess its I-Cube strategy. While current U.S.-Korea tech collaboration faces no export control hurdles, tighter U.S. AI chip restrictions on China could trigger supply chain scrutiny over Intel’s Korea-led packaging nodes. Within 18 months, advanced packaging will become the second front in foundry wars—system-level integration efficiency will dictate AI compute pricing power. Intel aims to offset process node lag with packaging prowess, but without concurrent yield gains in 18A/14A, this advantage may not translate into market leadership.