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SK Hynix said it has already sold next year’s production of semiconductors as the leading supplier of advanced memory chips to Nvidia posted record profits on the back of an artificial intelligence boom.
Operating profit in the third quarter jumped 62 per cent year on year to a record Won11.4tn ($8bn), in line with analyst forecasts compiled by LSEG SmartEstimate. Revenue rose 39 per cent to Won22.4tn, driven by surging demand for memory chips used in AI data centres, the company said on Wednesday.
The South Korean chipmaker said it expected its inventory for conventional dynamic random-access memory chips, which enable short-term data storage when a device is being used, was “extremely tight”. It added that cutting-edge high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to continue to outstrip supply as use of AI applications broadens.
“With the innovation of AI technology, the memory market has shifted to a new paradigm and demand has begun to spread to all product areas,” said chief financial officer Kim Woo-hyun.
Optimism for SK Hynix’s business outlook intensified after the company, along with rival Samsung Electronics, signed a preliminary agreement with OpenAI this month to supply semiconductors for the ChatGPT maker’s $500bn Stargate data centre project.
SK Hynix said its estimate for demand from the project was more than double the industry’s current HBM capacity and that it would set up a production system to meet OpenAI’s demand.
The chipmaker said it had completed HBM supply negotiations with other key customers for next year and would “substantially increase” capital expenditure as a result. It will begin supplying its most advanced HBM4 chips in the fourth quarter of this year.
“HBM demand continues to increase rapidly, so it will be difficult for supply to meet demand any time soon,” said Kim Ki-tae, head of HBM sales and marketing.
SK Hynix makes up more than half of the global HBM market, while Samsung accounts for just over a quarter, with US-based Micron, the other leading company in the sector, according to consultancy TrendForce.
The company’s competitive edge in HBM has helped triple its share price this year, making SK Hynix one of South Korea’s best-performing stocks. Its shares rose 4 per cent on Wednesday.
SK Hynix said the AI market’s shift to inference — the process by which applications such as chatbots produce responses — had increased demand for high-performance AI server chips.
“We project AI inference memory demand to expand not only in the US but also in China as Chinese hyperscalers are expected to push for AI inference investment,” Citi analysts said in a recent report.
Samsung is expected to post its biggest quarterly profit in three years when it reports on Thursday.
“With AI as the major driver, we’re expecting the HBM market to continue growing steeply over the next few years to around $43bn by 2027, giving strong earnings leverage to memory manufacturers like SK,” said MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research.
