SK Hynix surpasses Samsung as South Korea's most valuable company

"The emergence of customised AI representation fundamentally changed the industry's economics and allowed SK Hynix to found itself arsenic the marketplace leader," Kim Sunwoo, a elder expert astatine Meritz Securities, said.

The reversal is simply a singular crook for a institution that astir collapsed 2 decades ago. A imaginable merchantability to Micron loomed implicit the institution successful 2002, erstwhile what was past called Hynix Semiconductor had buckled nether indebtedness taken connected during a play of accelerated growth. After those talks collapsed, creditors ran the institution for adjacent to 10 years. Its banal traded arsenic debased arsenic 135 won successful 2003. The institution posted an operating nonaccomplishment of 7.73 trillion won for 2023, erstwhile a brutal slump successful representation prices weighed connected results, but surging AI concern helped it plaything to a then-record operating nett of 23.5 trillion won the pursuing year.

SK Hynix crossed a $1 trillion marketplace capitalization for the archetypal clip successful precocious May, joining Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. arsenic the lone Asian companies to scope that threshold. The institution is besides pursuing a U.S. listing done American depositary receipts, with a debut connected the Nasdaq arsenic aboriginal arsenic August. In a publication published successful January, Chey Tae-won, the SK Group president who pushed done the Hynix acquisition contempt interior opposition, laid retired his imaginativeness for what the woody was meant to achieve. His ambition, helium wrote, was to determination the institution distant from selling interchangeable commodity chips toward making products that customers could not bash without. "HBM is different. If SK Hynix's HBM is replaced with different product, the AI strategy whitethorn not relation properly," helium said.