On its own timeline, the pledge will do little to shorten the squeeze. Chey put the lead time for a greenfield fab at more than five years, placing fresh output near the tail end of the shortage window that he’s predicting. This new stance is also a significant departure from his March comments at Nvidia’s GTC conference, where he said a new fab wasn’t planned and that capacity couldn’t be added on demand.
Chey also said the cost of the buildout is difficult to pin down because prices for land, equipment, and electricity keep moving, which is likely why no figure accompanied the announcement. With the company's existing lines already saturated, customers have offered to buy SK hynix's EUV scanners and prefund fab lines as available capacity has fallen to near zero. "Until 2030, there's still some shortage," Chey told reporters
Ultimately, it’s HBM that’s driving the massive gap between wafer supply and demand. HBM consumes far more wafers per bit than standard DRAM and carries the industry's highest margins, so capacity keeps tilting toward them. SK hynix holds about 57% of the HBM market and 32% of global DRAM, and Chey has said he wants the company to become a major HBM supplier for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform and is seeking more manufacturing partnerships in Taiwan beyond TSMC.
But buyers aren’t waiting on new fabs for relief. TrendForce projected DRAM contract prices to rise 63% in the second quarter after climbing roughly 95% in the first, and DDR4 spot pricing ran up around 2,200% over 12 months before a recent decline. Even with capacity doubling, outlooks across the next five years are unchanged, and the market is likely to stay tight for the rest of the decade as things currently stand with AI demand.
SK Group chairman says memory chip shortage will last until 2030
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/sk-hynix-to-double-memory-wafer-capacity-over-five-years#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/subscription
- Intel Xeon 6+ Computex roundtable interview transcript — Kira Boyko and Tim Wilson on 18A wafer allocation, Clearwater Forest, and dropping hyper-threading
- Microsoft announces Majorana 2 quantum computing chip — claims a practical machine will come in 2029
- Cooler Master shows off new HAF II 500 chassis, aluminum fans, and new air coolers — New V8 Cooler, Masterfan A, and updated Silencio 600 and HAF chassis’ add t
- Intel addresses Arrow Lake blunder: 'We needed to build back our reputation' — says Arrow Lake Refresh's low price a key first step, laying the groundwork for N
- Land an RTX 5060-powered OLED gaming laptop for just $1,099 — HP's Omen Transcend features an Intel Core Ultra 7 255H 16-core CPU, 3K resolution, and WiFi 7
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.