AI boom propels memory chipmakers into the trillion-dollar club

The rush to supply the artificial intelligence revolution has redrawn the boundaries of the world’s most exclusive corporate club. This week SK Hynix, South Korea’s second-largest chipmaker, saw its market value soar past the $1 trillion mark for the first time, a milestone reached only hours after its American rival Micron Technology crossed the same threshold. Both joined Samsung Electronics, which had entered the club in early May, cementing a moment in which three memory chip specialists sit alongside the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia as trillion-dollar entities. Viewed from Seoul, the rally—SK Hynix shares jumped as much as 14.9 percent on Wednesday before closing 9.3 percent higher—has propelled the benchmark KOSPI index to a record high and underscored how deeply the country’s export economy is intertwined with the AI supply chain.

Behind the surge lies the explosive growth of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the ultra-fast, stacked DRAM chips that have become indispensable for the accelerators powering generative AI. SK Hynix has established an early lead in supplying advanced HBM3E chips to Nvidia, while Micron’s own HBM products are gaining traction, prompting UBS analysts to forecast its stock could double. The intensity of the demand shock is captured by the velocity of the ascent: Micron had touched a $500 billion valuation only 48 days earlier, a sprint that US financial commentators noted was swifter than comparable leaps by Meta, Amazon or Tesla. In Washington, the milestone is being read as evidence that America’s semiconductor resurgence extends well beyond logic chip design into the memory segment, even as the epicentre of memory manufacturing remains anchored in East Asia.

The enthusiasm has rippled far beyond Silicon Valley and the Suwon suburbs. Tokyo’s Nikkei index climbed to a record high, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq-100 breached 30,000 points for the first time. In Frankfurt, analysts observed that even German chip stocks, from Infineon to smaller equipment makers, have been swept up in the global repricing of semiconductor assets. Yet it is the sheer concentration of value that is most arresting: of the 17 companies worldwide that now boast a trillion-dollar market capitalisation, six are semiconductor firms—Nvidia, TSMC, Broadcom, Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix—a structural shift that would have seemed improbable before the large language model era.

Some market watchers are beginning to ask how long the momentum can last. The recent entry of multiple memory makers into the trillion-dollar bracket has prompted comparisons with the dot-com era’s clustering of inflated valuations, though proponents argue that HBM contracts command real premiums and supply remains constrained well into 2025. Analysts in London note that memory cycles have historically been brutal, but the AI capex supercycle is being driven by hyperscalers with balance sheets strong enough to sustain order books for years. For now, the magnetic pull of the AI narrative is overriding cyclical caution, turning once workaday DRAM manufacturers into the new barons of global equity markets.