SEOUL: South Korea’s SK Hynix posted on Thursday (Jul 24) a record quarterly profit, driven by strong demand for advanced chips used in generative artificial intelligence chipsets and as some customers stockpiled semiconductors ahead of potential U.S. tariffs.
“SK Hynix foresees that increasing competition among big tech companies to enhance inference of AI models would lead to higher demand for high-performance and high-capacity memory products,” it said in a statement.
The Nvidia supplier expects to double high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip sales for the full year compared to 2024, the company said. SK Hynix overtook Samsung Electronics as the world’s top memory chip maker in the first quarter due to its leadership in HBM chips, a crucial component of AI chipsets designed by the likes of Nvidia that assist the processing of vast amounts of data to train AI models.
SK Hynix reported a 9.2 trillion won (US$6.69 billion) operating profit for the April-June period, up 69 per cent from 5.5 trillion won a year earlier.
That compares with a 9.0 trillion won average forecast by LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward analysts who are more consistently accurate. Revenue rose 35 per cent to 22.2 trillion won during the quarter.
After posting a series of record profits boosted by strong AI demand, SK Hynix is bracing for potential US tariffs and rising competition from rivals in supplying advanced chips to Nvidia, analysts say.
