--- title: "How a Niche Memory Chip Made SK Hynix Worth More Than Samsung" description: "SK Hynix briefly overtook Samsung Electronics as South Korea's most valuable listed company in June 2026, capping a decade-long bet on high-bandwidth memory — the specialized chip that feeds Nvidia's AI accelerators." category: "Tech" category_url: https://boursel.com/category/tech author: "Rafael Ortiz" published: 2026-06-24T03:28:00.000Z updated: 2026-06-24T03:28:00.000Z canonical: https://boursel.com/article/sk-hynix-overtakes-samsung-hbm tags: ["sk-hynix", "samsung", "hbm", "nvidia", "semiconductors"] --- # How a Niche Memory Chip Made SK Hynix Worth More Than Samsung SK Hynix briefly overtook Samsung Electronics as South Korea's most valuable listed company in June 2026, capping a decade-long bet on high-bandwidth memory — the specialized chip that feeds Nvidia's AI accelerators. On Monday, June 22, 2026, shares of SK Hynix rose to a record, pushing its market capitalization to roughly 208.1 trillion won and past Samsung Electronics' 207.3 trillion won — the first time the smaller chipmaker had edged ahead of its much larger rival, [Reuters reported](https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/sk-hynix-surpasses-samsung-south-115234933.html). "Market capitalization" is simply a company's share price multiplied by its shares outstanding — the stock market's running tally of what a company is worth. As recently as 2012, Samsung was valued at more than ten times SK Hynix, [Investing.com noted](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/how-sk-hynixs-bet-on-a-niche-memory-chip-made-it-more-valuable-than-samsung-4757282). ## One product did it The reversal traces almost entirely to one product: high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. Memory chips known as DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) hold the data a processor is actively working on. HBM is a premium variant that stacks DRAM dies vertically and wires them directly beside a processor, moving far more data per second than standard memory. That bandwidth is the bottleneck for AI: Nvidia's data-center GPUs can only compute as fast as memory can feed them, which makes HBM a critical, high-margin component of every AI accelerator. SK Hynix's lead was not obvious. SK Group bought the struggling Hynix in 2012 in a deal that S&P warned was "financially irresponsible," per [Investing.com](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/how-sk-hynixs-bet-on-a-niche-memory-chip-made-it-more-valuable-than-samsung-4757282). The company shipped the world's first HBM with AMD in 2014, when the technology looked like a niche, and poured heavy investment into packaging capacity that, as late as 2019, sat underused as demand sagged. The launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022 changed the calculus, turning HBM into one of the most sought-after components in technology. ## The payoff in share and profit SK Hynix held the majority of the global HBM market in 2025 — estimates range from about 52% to 62% depending on the measure and quarter — and remained the leader at roughly 57% into early 2026, [TrendForce and other trackers reported](https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/08/18/news-nvidia-reportedly-drives-27-of-sk-hynix-revenue-in-1h25-cementing-ai-chip-partnership). Roughly 27% of the company's revenue in the first half of 2025 came from a single customer widely identified as Nvidia, making SK Hynix the GPU maker's main HBM supplier. The company has said its memory output for 2026 is already sold out, [per CNBC](https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/29/sk-hynix-q3-profit-revenue-record-.html). The financial swing has been violent. SK Hynix posted an operating loss of 7.73 trillion won in 2023 during a memory downturn, then a record operating profit in 2024 as its stock rallied more than 340% that year, [Investing.com reported](https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/how-sk-hynixs-bet-on-a-niche-memory-chip-made-it-more-valuable-than-samsung-4757282). The momentum carried into 2026 on surging memory prices. ## A contested crown The ranking is also contested. Samsung told Reuters its market value should include preferred shares, which would keep it ahead — a reminder that "most valuable" depends on what you count, [Reuters reported](https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/0622/1579624-sk-hynix-overtakes-samsung-to-become-south-koreas-most-v/). Samsung also reclaimed the lead in overall DRAM revenue late in 2025, even as SK Hynix kept its HBM crown — and, in a sign of how flush the memory business has become, the larger company is reported to be weighing a record share buyback. The broader picture is a memory industry remade by AI. Whether SK Hynix can defend its lead as Samsung and Micron scale up HBM production is an open question, and the figures here describe past results, not a forecast. But the milestone marks how quickly a once-overlooked chip moved from the margins to the center of the AI economy.