By Kwanwoo Jun


SK Hynix said its high bandwidth memory products were sold out for this year and almost fully booked for 2025 due to brisk demand for artificial-intelligence chips.

The South Korea-based HBM chip supplier said in a statement Thursday it plans to mass-produce its most advanced product, the 12-stack HBM3E chip, in the third quarter of 2024.

Samples of these chips will be made available to clients in May, ahead of mass production to meet the growing demand, SK Hynix said.

HBM and other AI chips are likely to account for 61% of SK Hynix's total memory chip revenue in 2028, up from around 5% in 2023, it added.

SK Hynix, the world's second-largest memory-chip maker, last week said it swung to a first-quarter net profit after five straight quarters of losses and it expects the overall memory market to recover this year on demand for AI chips.

To meet the strong demand for advanced memory chips, SK Hynix plans to spend an additional $14.56 billion to expand its semiconductor production capacity in South Korea.

The Korean company is also expanding in the U.S., with plans to build a $3.87 billion AI chip-packaging facility in Indiana. It is also partnering with Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker, to develop new HBM4 products.


Write to Kwanwoo Jun at kwanwoo.jun@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

05-02-24 0353ET