SK Hynix to invest $38 billion building new memory chip plants as demand soars

SK Hynix Inc. signage at the company's office in Seongnam, South Korea, on Tuesday, June 30, 2026. SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesSK Hynix said on Friday it will invest 54 trillion Korean won ($38.1 billion) to build two new memory chip manufacturing plants, as demand for the components, which are key to AI, continues to grow.The South Korean tech giant announced a 35.2 trillion won investment in a fabrication plant, or fab, in Yongin called "Y2," with 19.1 trillion won earmarked for a facility in Cheongju called "M17."It comes amid a surge in memory prices driven by a shortage of supply and huge demand from companies building AI infrastructure like data centers and chip firms such as Nvidia, which require large amounts of high-bandwidth memory (HBM).The surge in memory prices has led to the biggest producers of the product — SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron — seeing a massive rally in their share prices as investors bet the supply imbalance will persist for some time.Yongin Y2 is the second of four fabs SK Hynix has planned in the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster. The company said it will serve as a production base for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, which is in high deman...