SEOUL – SK Hynix on June 22 overtook Samsung Electronics to become South Korea’s most valuable listed company, marking a dramatic reversal of fortunes for a chipmaker that two decades ago nearly collapsed under debt.The company, now the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence systems for customers such as Nvidia and Google, has emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the global AI boom.Shares of SK Hynix, now the world’s most valuable memory chipmaker, closed up 5.6 per cent, lifting its market capitalisation to 2,080.4 trillion won (S$1.75 trillion), while Samsung’s stock eased 0.14 per cent to give it a market value of 2,066.7 trillion won, excluding preferred shares. SK Hynix shares have risen more than 340 per cent in 2026 alone, outperforming Samsung’s 200 per cent jump.AI has reshaped the global semiconductor industry, elevating specialised memory chips from commonly traded commodities into critical components of the infrastructure powering applications such as ChatGPT and advanced AI models.SK Hynix focuses primarily on memory chips, whereas Samsung also manufactures logic chips and consumer electronics such as smartphones and TVs. Samsung had held the top spot since 2000.“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 Sun-woo, a senior analyst at Meritz Securities.For SK Hynix, the achievement marks the culmination of one of the biggest turnarounds in South Korea’s corporate history.In 2002, the then Hynix Semiconductor was on the verge of being sold to Micron, having been crippled by debt accumulated during an aggressive expansion drive. The deal eventually fell through, leaving the company under creditor control for nearly a decade.Its shares plunged as low as 135 won in 2003, leaving it viewed as a penny stock, or “Dongjeon-ju” in Korean, among investors.Its fortunes in the years since tracked the global memory industry’s traditional boom-and-bust cycle. In 2023, a severe downturn battered memory prices, pushing SK Hynix to report an annual operating loss of 7.73 trillion won.It started recovering a year later as the AI boom gathered momentum and the likes of Microsoft, Google and Meta invested heavily, pushing it to report an annual operating profit of 23.5 trillion won in 2024, a record at the time.Analysts attribute SK Hynix’s central role in the global AI ecosystem to its decision to continue investing in HBM, a specialised memory chip stacked vertically to deliver faster performance and lower power consumption, during a downturn in the memory industry.Unlike conventional memory products, HBM chips are tightly integrated with AI processors, creating significantly higher barriers to entry and giving suppliers greater pricing power.By 2025, SK Hynix had captured 61 per cent of the global HBM market, far ahead of Samsung’s 17 per cent and Micron’s 21 per cent. REUTERS