SK Hynix on Monday overtook Samsung Electronics to become South Korea's most valuable listed company, ending its more than 25-year hold on the No. 1 spot as the AI memory boom minted a new market cap leader.
Shares closed up 5.61% at 2,919,000 won, pushing its valuation to 2,080.38 trillion won ($1.35 trillion), according to the Korea Exchange. The rival's common stock eased 0.14% to a value of 2,066.66 trillion won. The shift is the first change in the top KOSPI ranking in 25 years and seven months; Samsung had held the position since November 2000.
The milestone marks an extraordinary reversal for a company that nearly collapsed two decades ago. In 2002, then-Hynix Semiconductor was close to being sold to Micron after debt from aggressive expansion crushed the business.
The deal fell through, leaving it under creditor control for nearly a decade. Shares plunged as low as 135 won in 2003, making it a penny stock known in Korean as "Dongjeon-ju."
AI rewrote that story. It emerged as the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips powering Nvidia's AI supercomputers, and demand has been staggering.
Shares have rallied more than 340% this year alone, propelling it past both Samsung and Micron by valuation. At Taiwan's Computex trade show this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stopped at its booth and wrote on a reflective memory wafer: "Please make more :)." The wafer is expected to end up framed at SK Hynix headquarters, a souvenir of a moment when the world's most valuable chip company is begging Asia's memory makers for supply.
South Korea's chip exports soared 188.4% in early June from a year earlier, customs data showed, with computer-related shipments up 293.3%. Exports adjusted for working-day differences rose 49.7% in the first 20 days of June, leading to a trade surplus of $17.5 billion. The company's laser focus on memory has worked in its favor.
Samsung operates a much broader portfolio spanning smartphones, televisions, home appliances and displays, meaning rising chip prices boost its semiconductor division while increasing costs for finished-product businesses. Weak performance in its foundry and System LSI operations has also capped its share-price gains relative to SK Hynix.
"The emergence of customised AI memory fundamentally changed the industry's economics and allowed SK Hynix to establish itself as the market leader," said Kim Sunwoo, a senior analyst at Meritz Securities.
Samsung pushed back on the math, arguing any calculation should include preferred shares. Including those, its value stood at 2,246.4 trillion won as of market close, keeping it ahead on a total basis.
Investor sentiment has also been supported by its plan to pursue an American Depositary Receipt listing. The company confidentially submitted registration documents to the SEC in March, and a US debut could improve access for global investors.
The company reported an annual operating loss of 7.73 trillion won in 2023 during a severe downturn. One year later, as Microsoft, Google and Meta poured capital into AI infrastructure, it posted a record profit of 23.5 trillion won.
