Seoul, 28 January 2026 – South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. posted a record-beating fourth-quarter operating profit, powered by surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related memory chips that pushed prices sharply higher, according to a company earnings update.
For the October–December period, SK Hynix reported an operating profit of 19.2 trillion won (about US$13.5 billion), a 137 per cent year-on-year jump and comfortably above market expectations of around 17.7 trillion won.
The company’s strong results reflect intense global appetite for memory chips used in AI hardware alongside tightening supply across the sector. SK Hynix has solidified its position as a dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a specialised chip segment critical to accelerating next-generation AI models, securing roughly 61 per cent of the HBM market, according to industry research.
Conventional memory products such as DRAM and NAND also enjoyed pricing momentum as tight supply combined with robust demand, particularly for server and enterprise applications. For example, contract prices for popular 16GB DDR5 DRAM chips more than quadrupled year-on-year in the latest quarter, with further increases anticipated in the current quarter.
SK Hynix, a key supplier to leading AI players including Nvidia, plans to hold a detailed earnings briefing to outline its 2026 growth strategy, which many analysts see as increasingly tied to sustainable AI-driven hardware demand.
The results underscore how the ongoing global AI infrastructure build-out, from cloud data centres to specialist accelerators, is reshaping the memory chip market, enabling suppliers that can provide high-performance components to capture outsized profits amid supply constraints.
