SK Hynix is weeks away from a $1 trillion valuation — AI memory is why

SK Hynix is on the verge of joining the $1 trillion market-cap club — a threshold that, until recently, only a handful of US tech giants had reached. The South Korean memory-chip maker's valuation hit approximately $948 billion in mid-May 2026, per Reuters, after its stock climbed more than 200% year-to-date and 274% across all of 2025. Just 16 months ago, the company was valued at under $100 billion.

The HBM gold rush

The fuel behind this run is High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM — the specialised chip that sits alongside AI processors and moves data fast enough to keep them fed. If NVIDIA's GPUs are the brains of a large language model, HBM is the circulatory system. SK Hynix controls an estimated 50–62% of the global HBM market, and roughly 90% of its HBM output goes directly to NVIDIA. That near-monopoly position has translated into extraordinary financials: Q1 2026 revenue hit a record $35.5 billion, up 198% year-on-year, with a 72% operating margin.

The shortage is structural, not cyclical. SK Hynix's CEO has warned the crunch could last until 2027 or beyond — some analysts say 2030 — because building new fab capacity takes four to five years. In a notable strategic move, TradingKey reports that major tech customers have offered to fund new SK Hynix factories outright. The company has declined, recognising that accepting external funding would erode the pricing power that is currently minting its profits.

A concentrated market

SK Hynix now sits alongside Samsung and Micron in an HBM oligopoly: SK Hynix at roughly 62%, Micron at 21%, Samsung at 17%. All three are running at full capacity. Both Samsung and SK Hynix have shifted customers onto three-to-five-year supply contracts, locking in revenue — and locking out smaller buyers. In May 2026, all three coordinated a halt on legacy DDR4 memory orders, a move analysts described as unprecedented in 30 years of the DRAM market. US regulators are watching.

What it means

Samsung Electronics crossed the $1 trillion milestone in early May 2026, making South Korea the first country outside the United States to simultaneously host two companies at that scale. SK Hynix's laser focus on memory — unlike Samsung's sprawling consumer electronics empire — has made it the preferred infrastructure partner for the AI buildout. With HBM demand showing no signs of slowing and capacity locked up through at least 2026, the valuation trajectory is unlikely to reverse quickly. For investors, the question is whether a forward P/E that now matches Samsung's can be sustained once new capacity eventually comes online.