Economy News

SK Hynix and Micron join the $1 trillion club within 24 hours as AI memory demand soars

SK Hynix became a trillion-dollar company on Wednesday 27 May, a day after US rival Micron crossed the same line. Euronews reports SK Hynix shares rose as much as 13% in Seoul to a record, while Micron jumped 19% on Wall Street the day before, its biggest one-day gain since 2011. SK Hynix is the second South Korean company to pass $1 trillion, after Samsung Electronics on 6 May, and the third in Asia after TSMC. The Kospi rose as much as 2.9% to a record 8,457.

The driver is high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI servers. SK Hynix, a key supplier to Nvidia, has sold out its entire 2026 HBM capacity. Quartz cites Counterpoint Research data giving it 57% of the HBM market in the fourth quarter of 2025, against 22% for Samsung and 21% for Micron, and says the two Korean memory giants now make up half of the Kospi's market value.

“My theory is that the market is running on FOMO sentiments, especially on AI-related names in Japan and Korea.” — Fabien Yip, IG, via Khaleej Times

How each outlet framed it

• Euronews — a historic repricing of chipmakers, plus SK Hynix's filing to list ADRs in the US to fund its Yongin HBM hub and an Indiana packaging plant.
• Nocut News — the Korean scoreboard: 1,615.7 trillion won at 10 a.m., 12th in the world, with Samsung 11th at $1.376 trillion.
• Quartz — the close: up 9.3% after a 14.9% intraday jump, and an 18% first-day rise for a leveraged SK Hynix ETF.
• Khaleej Times (Reuters) — two weeks earlier, at $942 billion, a stock that was worth under $100 billion 16 months before.

Where the numbers differ: the intraday peak is 13% in Euronews and 14.9% in Quartz. Year-to-date gains are about 250% (Euronews) or about 215% (Quartz), and the Kospi's rise this year is over 100% or 95%.