The storage industry continues to thrive! SK Hynix is closely following Samsung Electronics into the "Trillion Dollar Club."

Just weeks after Samsung Electronics surpassed the trillion-dollar market value mark, another South Korean storage chip giant SK Hynix is also set to reach a trillion-dollar market value. Following an astonishing 274% increase in 2025, SK Hynix's stock price has already risen by over 200% in 2026, pushing the company's market value to $938.6 billion. With the strong demand from large tech companies for building artificial intelligence (AI) data centers leading to constrained storage chip supply and driving up prices for high-end and ordinary storage chips, both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have benefited from the ongoing growth trend in the global storage chip market. Against this backdrop, SK Hynix's market value surpassing the trillion-dollar mark is just around the corner. If SK Hynix joins Samsung Electronics in the "trillion-dollar market value club," South Korea will become the first market outside of the United States to have two trillion-dollar companies. In the era where computing power equals productivity, Asian semiconductor companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. Sponsored ADR, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, are firmly occupying the core position of the global industry chain. Sydney IG market analyst Fabien Yip said, "The market is being driven by FOMO (fear of missing out) sentiment, especially in AI-related stocks in Japan and South Korea." Investor demand for SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and other chip stocks has also driven the South Korean stock market to "resume its glory" this year. The benchmark KOSPI index in South Korea soared by 75% in 2025, marking its best annual performance since 1999. The index has continued its upward trend this year, rising by over 86% and reaching a historic high. "The storage shortage" intensifies! Tech giants rush to invest in SK Hynix to guarantee supply According to reports, global tech giants are vying to invest in SK Hynix to secure storage chip supplies by proposing investments to build new production facilities and funding for expensive production equipment. This phenomenon is unprecedented in the global storage chip industry, highlighting the severity of the current storage chip shortage. Insiders revealed that SK Hynix's clients have proposed various collaboration plans, including investing in dedicated memory production lines. Another proposal involves clients funding the purchase of equipment for SK Hynix, such as ASML Holding NV ADR's extreme ultraviolet lithography machine, with a single unit priced at hundreds of millions of dollars. Insiders also disclosed that some collaboration plans target the first-phase project of SK Hynix's large wafer fab in Icheon, South Korea, which will focus on producing DRAM memory chips in the future. However, insiders also mentioned that due to their sufficient funds, SK Hynix is cautious about accepting investments from clients. This is because such deals could potentially put them at the mercy of specific buyers, demanding lower prices for chips in exchange for a "longer-term, more stable income guarantee." Insiders bluntly stated, "Regardless of the proposals from clients, the available production capacity is almost zero at the moment. Not even a small portion of the capacity can be allocated to specific customers." The rush of investment proposals from tech giants towards SK Hynix is rare in the history of the storage chip industry. The industry has always exhibited extreme boom-bust cycles. This also leads chip manufacturers to believe that the current upswing in the industry is likely to last longer. Both SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics stated last month that the current shortage of storage chips will continue, as chip manufacturers need time to build capacity to keep up with the "structural growth" in AI demand. SK Hynix mentioned, "Due to current supply constraints, the company is unable to fully meet all customer demands," and added that requests from customers to sign long-term contracts to ensure supply are increasing rapidly. The "storage super cycle" continues Whether it's Alphabet Inc.'s massive TPU AI computing clusters, or NVIDIA Corporation's massive AI GPU computing clusters, both rely on fully integrating HBM memory systems with AI chips, and tech giants currently accelerating the construction or expansion of AI data centers must purchase server-grade DDR5 memory and enterprise-level high-performance SSD/HDD. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, Inc. are all pivotal forces in the three most core storage areas: HBM, server high-performance DRAM (including DDR5/LPDDR5X), and high-end data center-level SSD, undoubtedly benefiting from the "super dividends" of the AI infrastructure wave. Regarding the price increase of DRAM/NAND storage chips, financial giant Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. predicts that the price increase for storage in 2026 will far exceed its previous optimistic expectations. Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. recently raised its forecast for the price increase of DRAM storage chips from around 150% to 250%-280%, and for NAND prices from around 100% to 200%-250%. This means that Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. believes this is not just a normal inventory correction cycle, but a "super supply shortage cycle" caused by the unprecedented surge in demand driven by AI computing, the extremely complex manufacturing and packaging process of HBM memory, and the limited elasticity of general DRAM/NAND supply. The huge benefits brought by this storage super cycle are directly reflected in the latest financial reports of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. SK Hynix's previous financial report showed a net profit of 40.33 trillion Korean won in the first quarter, far exceeding analysts' expectations of 29.39 trillion Korean won; operating profit in the first quarter was 37.61 trillion Korean won, also higher than market expectations. The average selling price of DRAM in the first quarter rose by about 60% compared to the fourth quarter of last year, and the average selling price of NAND in the first quarter rose by about 70%. SK Hynix stated that the strong demand for server memory is offsetting the weak performance in the personal computer and smartphone chip sectors, driving overall market growth. In the server memory sector, demand for both DRAM and NAND is expanding. SK Hynix expects the favorable pricing environment to continue in the short term; DRAM shipments in the second quarter are expected to increase by a high single-digit percentage compared to the previous quarter, and NAND shipments in the second quarter are expected to increase by about 15%. Samsung Electronics' financial report showed that the company achieved revenue of 133.9 trillion Korean won in the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 69% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 43%. The semiconductor business unit achieved revenue of 81.7 trillion Korean won, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 86%. The storage business has become the core contributor to Samsung Electronics' performance in the first quarter. Statistics show that this is the first time that semiconductor business revenue accounted for more than 50% of the group's total revenue. The company's semiconductor business unit mainly includes storage chips and foundry businesses. In the first quarter, revenue from storage chips was 74.8 trillion Korean won (a quarter-on-quarter increase of 101.62%), while revenue from foundry business was 6.9 trillion Korean won (quarter-on-quarter flat). The profit performance is also impressive. Samsung Electronics achieved an operating profit of 57.2 trillion Korean won in the first quarter, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 184.6% and a year-on-year increase of 756%. The operating profit of the semiconductor business unit was 53.7 trillion Korean won in the first quarter, compared to 16.4 trillion Korean won in the fourth quarter of 2025, representing a more than doubled increase. It is worth mentioning that due to the breakdown of salary negotiations between Samsung Electronics and its union on Wednesday, the union workers plan to go on an 18-day strike starting on May 21. If the strike goes through, it will be the first actual strike in the history of Samsung Electronics and even the global semiconductor industry to have a real impact on production and the market. Unlike the 25-day strike in July 2024, which involved about 5,000 participants, this time the union expects more than 40,000 participants, and the union chairman, Choi Seung-ho, even mentioned that it could exceed 50,000 participants, accounting for 64% of the total number of semiconductor employees at Samsung Electronics (about 78,000). The strike may disrupt the already tense global storage chip supply. A large-scale strike by about 40,000 Samsung Electronics employees on April 23 led to an 18.4% drop in storage wafer production capacity and a 58.1% drop in foundry wafer production capacity. This strike has proven that even in highly automated storage production lines, the absence of 40,000 workers can cause nearly one-fifth of the production capacity to be lost, while labor-intensive foundry production lines have suffered a direct cut of nearly 60%. If routine setup and maintenance work for semiconductor equipment are suspended for a long time, it may take twice as long to return to normal operations. This means that if the union indeed conducts an 18-day strike, Samsung Electronics may need up to 36 days (over a month) to fully restore normal production capacity. This will undoubtedly severely impact Samsung Electronics and the global semiconductor supply chain.