SK Hynix, the South Korean memory chipmaker, plans to spend roughly 54 trillion won building two new chip fabrication plants at home — a figure reported as $38 billion by most outlets, $38.1 billion by Engadget, and $39.42 billion by The Tribune, reflecting differences in how the won total was converted.
According to Livemint, the expansion adds to the company's push to rapidly double its production capacity and ease a global shortage. The Tribune reports the new fabs will be built in Yongin and Cheongju. Engadget says the plants will produce DRAM and NAND — the two main types of memory chips, one used as a computer's fast working memory, the other for longer-term storage. Quartz also reported the $38 billion, two-factory plan.
The context is the AI boom. Training and running large AI models requires enormous amounts of high-speed memory sitting alongside the processors doing the math, and demand has outrun what existing factories can produce. That shortage has been felt beyond data centers, since the same underlying components go into phones, laptops and cars.
Chip fabs are among the most expensive facilities on earth and take years to bring online, so a commitment on this scale is effectively a bet that AI demand for memory will still be climbing well after the buildings are finished.
It matters because memory has become one of the tightest bottlenecks in the AI supply chain, and how quickly SK Hynix can add capacity will shape both the pace of AI expansion and the price of everyday electronics.