Samsung Loses 25-Year Market Cap Crown to SK Hynix

The reason is HBM. Demand for high-bandwidth memory has surged as AI servers need faster data movement and greater power efficiency. SK Hynix has become a key supplier for AI systems used by companies such as NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Google. Reuters said SK Hynix controls about 61 percent of the HBM market, ahead of Micron at 21 percent and Samsung at 17 percent.

HBM is not standard memory. It stacks chips in a way that lets data move much faster than traditional DRAM, which matters when giant AI models are trained and run at scale. That technical edge has turned into market value. Quickly.

When demand is tight and supply is specialized, investors reward the company already sitting in the strongest position. That is exactly what happened here.

From near collapse to the top

SK Hynix did not reach this point smoothly. The company nearly went bankrupt before coming under SK Group’s control. In 2002, Hynix was almost sold to Micron. A year later, its shares were trading like a penny stock at just 135 won, or about US$0.088 per share.

That history makes the latest valuation shift more striking. Reuters quoted analysts saying SK Hynix kept investing in HBM even when the wider memory market was weak. The payoff arrived when AI demand exploded and the market suddenly wanted exactly the product the company had spent years building.

Semiconductor cycles can look quiet for a long time. Then they move hard. Factories keep running, engineers keep testing, and the market barely notices. Until it does.

Why HBM gave SK Hynix the edge

HBM is harder to ramp up than ordinary memory chips. That has helped SK Hynix protect its lead. As cloud providers and AI chipmakers push for more capacity, the supplier with an established HBM foothold benefits first, and often most.

This advantage is about more than product design. It also reflects long-term investment at a time when many investors were skeptical about the memory sector. SK Hynix kept spending on HBM development while demand was still uncertain. Now the market is pricing in that patience, along with tighter supply and stronger margins.

The ripple effect reaches beyond one company. When a component becomes essential for AI infrastructure, its supplier can influence contracts, production plans, and capital spending across the broader semiconductor chain. That is one reason the AI chip race has changed how investors value memory makers.

Samsung still has scale, and it is not backing down

Samsung remains a giant in DRAM production, which still matters across the memory business. Reuters cited Bank of America estimates saying SK Hynix is expected to narrow the production gap with Samsung to 10 percent by 2028.

For this year, SK Hynix is projected to produce nearly 589,000 DRAM wafers, while Samsung is expected to make around 691,000 wafers. Samsung still leads on scale, but the gap is shrinking.

Samsung also pushed back on how the market cap was calculated. The company told Reuters its valuation should include preferred shares. Under that method, Samsung’s market value would rise to 2,246.4 trillion won, or about US$1.46 trillion. The dispute matters because market rankings can change depending on whether preferred stock is counted. Investors know that. They watch it closely.

For readers, the bigger point is simple: the AI boom is reshaping the semiconductor hierarchy in real time. A product once treated as niche is now driving valuation changes at the top of one of Asia’s most important tech markets.

That matters for the region, including electronics manufacturers, cloud providers, and data-center operators that depend on memory supply. If HBM demand stays elevated, pricing power will stay with the companies that can ship it. Reuters reported that Samsung’s preferred-share argument may change the calculation on paper, but the market has already sent its message: SK Hynix now sits at the front of South Korea’s chip race.