South Korea's KOSPI hits record as SK Hynix joins $1 trillion club after Samsung, Micron - MSN

South Korea's benchmark KOSPI index hit a record high amid an AI-driven rally, as SK Hynix joined Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology in the $1 trillion market capitalization club. The surge was... Read original →

The AI compute arms race is fundamentally reordering semiconductor value chains: SK Hynix’s entry into the $1T club underscores how HBM has evolved from a peripheral component to a critical bottleneck in AI accelerator performance. NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture’s reliance on HBM3E is diverting TSMC’s CoWoS advanced packaging capacity toward memory, triggering direct competition between logic and memory for scarce interposer resources. Geopolitically, tighter U.S.-ROK coordination on memory export controls—especially restricting HBM tech flows to Taiwan, China and mainland China—will raise compliance overhead. In response, Micron may accelerate alliances with Intel and Broadcom to build a North American AI memory ecosystem, lobbying for CHIPS Act extensions targeting memory. Over the next 18 months, the race to HBM5 will define AI infrastructure leadership; if Korean giants maintain yield and scale advantages, their valuation premium holds—but any U.S.-led push for integrated logic-memory manufacturing reshoring could trigger a second supply chain realignment.