SK Hynix and Samsung Shares Surge Over 20% Each as AI Rally Resumes

Shares of South Korean semiconductor giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics each jumped more than 20% after strong quarterly earnings results from Amazon and Microsoft reignited investor optimism around artificial intelligence spending.

The rally in memory chip stocks followed better-than-expected financial reports from two of the world's largest cloud computing providers. Amazon and Microsoft, both major buyers of AI-related computing infrastructure, signaled continued investment in data center expansion, bolstering confidence in demand for advanced semiconductors.

Japanese semiconductor stocks also advanced in sympathy, tracking the broader regional rally in chip-related equities.

SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory chipmaker, is a leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a critical component used in AI accelerators and graphics processing units. HBM chips are stacked memory modules engineered to deliver much higher data throughput than conventional DRAM, making them essential for the bandwidth-intensive workloads generated by large AI models. The global HBM market is effectively concentrated among three suppliers — SK Hynix, Samsung, and U.S.-based Micron Technology — giving these companies outsized exposure to the AI accelerator supply chain. Samsung Electronics, South Korea's largest company by market capitalization, is also a major producer of memory chips, logic semiconductors, and consumer electronics.

Both companies are key beneficiaries of the global buildout of AI computing infrastructure, as demand for high-performance memory used in data centers continues to grow. SK Hynix and Samsung are among the primary suppliers of HBM chips to NVIDIA, the dominant designer of AI GPUs. The link between cloud provider capital expenditure and Korean memory chip demand runs through these AI accelerators: when hyperscalers increase spending on NVIDIA-based server clusters, orders for the HBM modules that populate those GPUs tend to rise in tandem.

The broader semiconductor sector has experienced volatility in recent sessions amid fluctuating investor sentiment toward AI-related equities. Strong earnings from major hyperscale cloud providers, which are among the largest purchasers of AI computing hardware, have served as a recurring catalyst for chip stock rallies. Memory chip stocks in particular are sensitive to shifts in the cyclical pricing dynamics of DRAM and NAND, in addition to the newer HBM demand trajectory tied to AI.

Source: CNBC-TV18