On May 11, 2026, South Korea’s two semiconductor giants—SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics—propelled the nation’s stock market to new heights, as surging global demand for memory chips and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure sent their share prices soaring. The day marked a series of milestones: SK Hynix’s stock price touched 1.9 million KRW intraday for the first time, closing at 1,912,000 KRW by early afternoon, up an eye-popping 13.4% from the previous day. Samsung Electronics, not to be outdone, climbed 6.52% to 286,000 KRW, also breaking its own record highs. The combined market capitalization of these two titans reached approximately 3,034 trillion KRW, underscoring their dominance in the global memory sector, according to reports from Yonhap Infomax, Asia Economy, ET News, and Global Economic.
This remarkable rally wasn’t an isolated event. It followed a weekend of optimism in global equity markets, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index in New York rising 1.71%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index jumping 5.5%. U.S. chipmakers like Intel and Micron posted double-digit gains, buoyed by robust earnings and a bullish outlook for AI-driven growth. The momentum spilled over into Asia, where investors piled into semiconductor stocks, especially those with exposure to the AI infrastructure boom.
At the heart of this surge lies a structural transformation in the global memory market, driven by three converging forces. First, as highlighted in a series of reports by Motley Fool and market research firm Gartner, global memory spending is projected to nearly triple in 2026, from $216 billion to $633 billion (about 927 trillion KRW). This growth rate outpaces the broader semiconductor industry, which is expected to see revenues jump 64% year-on-year to $1.32 trillion (1,934 trillion KRW). "AI data centers can’t keep up with the storage needed for inference operations," Motley Fool noted, emphasizing that demand is structurally outstripping supply.
Second, the nature of customer contracts is changing. Where once NAND and DRAM customers relied on short-term, spot-market purchases, they are now locking in multi-year supply agreements. SanDisk’s recent $42 billion (61.55 trillion KRW) long-term contract is seen as a harbinger for Samsung and SK Hynix, signaling a shift away from the inventory gluts that previously plagued the sector. The implication? A more stable, predictable revenue stream for memory makers and a decisive end to the era of "inventory dumping."
Third, the proliferation of agentic AI—AI systems that independently perform complex operations—is fueling an unprecedented expansion in memory demand. Broadcom, for instance, revealed that six major customers, including Google, Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI, plan to build data centers with a combined capacity of 10 gigawatts by 2027. That’s equivalent to the output of ten nuclear power plants! As these hyperscalers race to expand their AI infrastructure, the need for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and advanced DRAM has never been greater.
SK Hynix and Samsung are uniquely positioned to benefit. The two companies control 79% of the global HBM market. Samsung recently unveiled its HBM4E core die wafer for data centers at GTC 2026, while SK Hynix has begun mass-producing SOCAMM2 memory modules tailored for Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin platform. Foreign and institutional investors have taken note, pouring capital into both firms as they become central players in the AI supply chain.
Kiwoom Securities, a leading South Korean brokerage, sharply raised its target price for SK Hynix from 1.3 million KRW to 1.9 million KRW on May 11, 2026, citing the outsized impact of surging generic memory prices. The firm now expects SK Hynix’s second-quarter operating profit to hit 70 trillion KRW, well above the market consensus of 61 trillion KRW. Sales are forecasted at 87.3 trillion KRW, a 66% jump from the previous quarter, with operating profit up 86%. DRAM and NAND prices are expected to rise by 53% and 75%, respectively. Segment-wise, DRAM should contribute 52.8 trillion KRW in operating profit (up 69% quarter-over-quarter), while NAND is projected to add 17.2 trillion KRW (up 171%).
Yet, not all is unbridled optimism. While Kiwoom Securities raised its price target, it also downgraded its investment rating from ‘Buy’ to ‘Outperform,’ citing the rapid surge in SK Hynix’s share price and a narrowing valuation gap. “The sharp rise in generic memory prices is nearing its final stage,” analyst Park Yu-ak observed, suggesting that while further gains are possible, they may be more muted going forward. Park also noted that SK Hynix is converting some high-bandwidth memory lines to LPDDR5 and boosting the share of generic memory sales to further improve performance.
Analyst Kim, meanwhile, raised SK Hynix’s target price even higher, from 2 million KRW to 2.7 million KRW on May 7, 2026, citing elevated memory price levels and an increased share of long-term supply agreements. Kim projects an average return on equity (ROE) of 66% from 2026 to 2028 and forecasts SK Hynix’s operating profit to reach 278 trillion KRW this year and 398 trillion KRW in 2027. The rationale? AI cloud providers like CoreWeave, Google Cloud, and AWS are reporting explosive growth in order backlogs—up 48.8%, 92.6%, and 49.2% quarter-over-quarter, respectively—enabling them to sustain high capital expenditures despite short-term cash flow pressures.
Of course, risks remain. Global Economic cautions that geopolitical tensions—particularly in the Strait of Hormuz—could drive up energy prices, raising operating costs for AI data centers and potentially slowing big tech’s capital spending. There’s also the specter of increased competition from Chinese memory manufacturers like CXMT, especially in the legacy DRAM market. While Korean firms dominate the high-value HBM segment, a flood of low-cost Chinese DRAM could erode profitability in the more commoditized sectors.
For investors, the key metrics to watch in the coming months include: whether big tech’s capital expenditures continue to rise beyond the second quarter; if HBM prices and the ratio of long-term contracts keep increasing; and whether Samsung and SK Hynix mirror SanDisk’s success in securing multi-year agreements. As Motley Fool pointed out, the "future is effectively locked in" for Korea’s memory leaders, provided that supply expansion doesn’t outpace the seemingly insatiable demand from AI and cloud computing.
In short, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics have found themselves at the epicenter of a global tech transformation, where AI’s relentless appetite for memory is rewriting the rules of the semiconductor game. As the world’s data centers race to keep up, Korea’s chip giants look set to remain in the driver’s seat—at least for now.