SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chipmaker, said on Friday it will invest about 54 trillion won ($38 billion) to build two new memory chip manufacturing plants in South Korea, doubling down on the AI-driven boom in high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

The board approved 35.2 trillion won for a fabrication plant in Yongin called "Y2" — the second of four planned fabs in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster — and 19.1 trillion won for a facility in Cheongju called "M17." The Yongin Y2 plant will focus on DRAM production, including HBM and other next-generation memory, with groundbreaking scheduled for July 2027 and its first cleanroom opening in June 2029. The Cheongju M17 plant will produce NAND flash memory, for which the company says demand is "surging rapidly," breaking ground in February 2027 and opening its first cleanroom in December 2028.

The investment comes amid a surge in memory prices driven by supply shortages and enormous demand from AI infrastructure builders, including data centers and chip firms like Nvidia that consume vast quantities of HBM. The price rally has lifted the shares of SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron, though SK Hynix recently lost the top spot in the DRAM market to Samsung in the second quarter, according to Counterpoint Research.

"This has prompted SK Hynix to inject fresh capex to expand its footprint. In the near term, this won't alter SK Hynix's output but is built for 2029 and beyond," said Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research. He noted that multi-vendor expansions from Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and CXMT will significantly expand global supply through 2028, yet with demand growing even faster than planned capacity, memory prices are unlikely to soften before the end of 2028.

The two plants form the next tranche of SK Hynix's master plan, announced last year, which envisions 600 trillion won of investment in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster and 100 trillion won to expand its Cheongju base.

Sources