SEOUL — It took 14 years of risky bets, plenty of skepticism, and more than a few close calls, but SK Hynix has emerged as South Korea’s most valuable publicly traded company — surpassing the long-dominant Samsung Electronics and landing at the heart of the global artificial intelligence frenzy.
When conglomerate SK Group purchased Hynix Semiconductor back in 2012, many observers called the acquisition financially reckless. At that time, Samsung was worth more than ten times SK Hynix and held the top spot globally in Dynamic Random-Access Memory — the type of memory chip that powers everyday devices like laptops and smartphones.
Looking for a competitive advantage, SK Hynix chose to pursue a different and largely overlooked type of chip: high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. These chips could move data at high speeds but had limited use among data center operators at the time.
The company partnered with Advanced Micro Devices to release the world’s first HBM product in 2014. However, problems with the chip’s second generation caused SK Hynix to fall behind Samsung in the late 2010s. According to two former company executives, that setback sparked internal debate about whether to abandon HBM development altogether.
Leadership ultimately chose to press forward, overhauling their technology and committing to major production investments. A key factor in that decision was anticipated demand from Nvidia — a company that was then primarily recognized as a maker of 3D graphics chips for computers and video games. That account comes from Shim Dae-yong, who headed HBM development at SK Hynix during that period.
The decision came with a hefty price tag: an 880 billion won investment — roughly $640 million — directed toward a packaging facility in Icheon and other infrastructure. The bet initially looked like a mistake. In 2019, the facility sat largely idle as demand from both Nvidia and cryptocurrency miners dried up.
