SK Hynix drops below $1T market cap after brief stint in the trillion-dollar club - Crypto Briefing

SK Hynix briefly entered the trillion-dollar market cap club in May 2026 before seeing its stock plunge nearly 10% in a single session, erasing its recent milestone. The South Korean memory chipmaker,... Read original →

SK Hynix’s retreat from the $1T club signals that the AI-fueled HBM boom is hitting a pricing inflection point. Its 72% operating margin vastly exceeds historical DRAM norms (typically 30–40%), indicating unsustainable profitability. Technically, yield bottlenecks in HBM3E/HBM4 are being rapidly overcome by Samsung and Micron, empowering GPU makers like NVIDIA to shift HBM from a scarce bottleneck to a commoditized component. On the compliance front, U.S. export controls on advanced packaging tools could raise SK’s China-based capacity expansion costs, while mature-node constraints in Taiwan, China further erode supply chain flexibility. Strategically, Samsung has begun HBM4 pilot production, and Micron is leveraging U.S.-Japan alliances to secure materials—setting up a 2027 battle for customer lock-in. Over the next 12–24 months, HBM prices may drop 30–40%, yet persistent AI server demand will sustain moderate memory market growth, transitioning the sector from speculative windfalls to operational precision.