SK Hynix overtakes Samsung as South Korea’s most valuable company - Crypto Briefing

SK Hynix has overtaken Samsung to become South Korea's most valuable company, marking a significant shift in the global semiconductor landscape driven by the AI revolution. SK Hynix's dominance in hig... Read original →

SK Hynix’s ascent to South Korea’s most valuable company reflects a fundamental realignment in semiconductor value chains driven by AI’s insatiable bandwidth demands. Its dominance in HBM—enabled by tight integration with TSMC’s CoWoS packaging—highlights how memory is no longer a commodity but a co-processor in AI systems. Samsung’s yield issues with HBM3E reveal structural gaps in its vertical integration, particularly in through-silicon via and heterogeneous assembly. This gap will likely force Samsung to merge its logic and memory divisions more aggressively and accelerate U.S.-Japan-South Korea collaboration on advanced packaging standards. Over the next 18 months, the race to HBM4 will trigger intense IP battles, while China’s progress in hybrid bonding could determine whether the global HBM duopoly remains intact or fractures.