South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix is rapidly approaching a $1 trillion market valuation, underscoring how the global artificial intelligence boom is reshaping financial markets and placing South Korea at the center of the semiconductor supply chain.
The company’s shares have risen more than 200% this year after soaring 274% in 2025, driven by explosive demand for memory chips used in AI servers, cloud infrastructure and advanced computing systems.
Valued at less than $100 billion just 16 months ago, SK Hynix ended Thursday with a market capitalization of roughly $942 billion, putting it within reach of joining the world’s trillion-dollar corporate club.
In the last year, the stock has surged by a whopping over 850%.
The rally comes only weeks after Samsung Electronics crossed the trillion-dollar threshold, raising the prospect of South Korea becoming the first country outside the United States to host more than one company valued above $1 trillion.
Asia’s largest listed company by market value remains TSMC, which is worth more than $1.8 trillion.
AI boom lifts Korean equities
The enthusiasm surrounding AI-related semiconductor stocks has fueled a historic rally across South Korean equities.
The benchmark KOSPI rose 1.75% on Thursday to close at 7,981.41.
The index has surged more than 86% this year after climbing 75% in 2025, marking its strongest multi-year performance since 1999.
KB Securities recently raised its year-end target for the KOSPI by 40% to 10,500 points, reflecting growing confidence that AI-driven spending will continue boosting corporate earnings.
Stocks broadly rose on Thursday as investors also balanced optimism around AI demand with caution surrounding a closely watched summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Trump received a ceremonial welcome at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People as the two leaders opened talks expected to focus on trade tensions, Taiwan and the ongoing conflict involving Iran.
Despite geopolitical uncertainty, investor appetite for semiconductor stocks remained strong as chipmakers continue reporting record earnings tied to AI infrastructure spending.
The gains have highlighted the increasingly strategic role of memory chip producers compared with some Silicon Valley firms, whose massive AI spending commitments have made profitability less predictable.
Analysts grow more bullish on SK Hynix
Analysts say memory chips are becoming one of the most critical components of the AI economy, especially as AI inference workloads grow more demanding.
“Amid the rapid growth of AI inference, the global market is reassessing the value of memory semiconductors,” Daishin Securities analyst Ryu Hyung-keun said Monday.
“This is not a one-off event, but the beginning of a new era,” Ryu said.
He raised his target price on SK Hynix shares by 47% to 2,500,000 won, equivalent to roughly $1,710.
The stock recently traded 12% higher at 1,887,000 won.
Fund managers also increasingly see South Korea as one of the biggest beneficiaries of changing supply chains and rising geopolitical tensions.
Eduardo Marques, founder and chief investment officer at Pertento Partners, said Korean semiconductor shares still trade at relatively attractive valuations despite their massive rally.
“Korea stands out as the place with more value,” Marques said during a panel discussion at the Sohn Investment Conference earlier this week.
Marques noted that SK Hynix trades at roughly six times forward earnings, compared with around 10 times for rival Micron Technology.
He also suggested investors could gain indirect exposure to the AI boom through SK Square, the parent company of SK Hynix, which he said trades at a 47% discount to the chipmaker.
Marques described SK Hynix as likely to remain “a cash gusher” over the next several years as AI-related demand continues expanding.
Outlook improves ahead of Q2 earnings
Brokerages have become increasingly optimistic about SK Hynix’s earnings outlook as memory prices continue climbing.
HSBC Global Research analyst Ricky Seo said the company is likely to deliver stronger-than-expected second-quarter results driven by higher pricing for DRAM chips.
Seo expects average selling prices for SK Hynix’s DRAM products to rise 40% during the April-to-June quarter, significantly above his previous estimate of 28%.
The increase is being driven by higher prices for chips used in data servers, smartphones and personal computers, as well as recovering demand for HBM3E chips used in AI applications.
Seo raised his operating profit forecast for SK Hynix by 14% to 65 trillion won for the second quarter and increased his 2026 operating profit estimate by 13% to 265 trillion won.
The company has been expanding investments both domestically and internationally, particularly in the United States, to meet surging AI-related memory demand.
Morningstar analyst Jing Jie Yu said prices for DRAM and NAND memory chips could peak in 2027 as demand continues outpacing supply.
Morningstar expects SK Hynix’s operating margin to rise to 75.7% in 2026 and 77.3% in 2027, compared with 48.6% in 2025.
The research firm also forecasts the company’s dividend payout increasing sharply to 15,000 won per share in 2026 and 16,000 won in 2027 from 3,000 won in 2025.
Missed the SK Hynix rally? This ETF is your saviour
The surge in AI memory stocks has also fueled one of the most successful exchange-traded fund launches in history.
The Roundhill Memory ETF, which trades under the ticker DRAM, has accumulated more than $6 billion in assets since launching on April 2.
According to market data, the fund has surpassed even the rapid growth seen during the launch of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust in 2024.
The ETF’s share price has nearly doubled since launch as investors seek broader exposure to memory-chip manufacturers including SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, Micron and SanDisk.
Market analysts say the fund has become popular partly because many traditional semiconductor ETFs lack meaningful exposure to Asian memory-chip leaders.
“A lot of investors view this as a proxy for alluring but otherwise hard-to-access Korean stocks,” Steve Sosnick, market strategist at Interactive Brokers, said in a Reuters report.
Vanda Research estimated that retail investors bought $55 million worth of the ETF on Monday alone, marking the largest daily inflow from individual investors since its launch.
The amount exceeded retail flows into individual AI-related stocks such as Nvidia as investors increasingly favored diversified semiconductor exposure.
“One thing I really like about the fund’s composition is that investors also gain global exposure to this segment of the AI chip realm,” Adam Spatacco, contributing technology analyst at The Motley Fool, wrote earlier this week.
“With an expense ratio hovering near 0.65% and a share price of about $50, the fund is reasonably priced for the AI memory sector exposure. And given that it is a passive ETF, it undercuts the cost and time of constantly rebalancing an individual portfolio,” he added.
Analysts also say SK Hynix could benefit in the short term from labor tensions at Samsung Electronics.
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