SK Hynix's CEO, Kwak No-Jung, announced plans to finalize sales negotiations for next year's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production within the first half of this year. This move suggests that the company's HBM capacity for 2026 may soon be fully booked. During a shareholder meeting in Icheon, Kwak emphasized the importance of securing stable sales by completing discussions with clients regarding HBM output for the upcoming year.
SK Hynix's HBM capacity for this year is already sold out, with its 12-layer HBM3E products being supplied to major clients like NVIDIA. The CEO anticipates a continuous rise in HBM demand due to the expansion of diverse artificial intelligence ecosystems and additional requirements from new generative AI models, such as China's DeepSeek.
Despite growing global economic uncertainties, major tech companies are ramping up investments to secure leadership in the AI sector. As a result, the demand for GPUs and other chips is expected to significantly boost HBM requirements. Kwak predicts that the HBM market will grow ninefold this year compared to 2023, while the enterprise solid-state drive (eSSD) market is projected to expand 3.5 times.
Consequently, SK Hynix expects the share of HBM sales in its total memory chip revenue to increase from 40% in 2024 to over 50% by 2025. Last year, SK Hynix reported sales of 66.2 trillion Korean won (approximately $452 billion) with an operating profit of 23.5 trillion Korean won.
