Samsung and SK Hynix, backed by the South Korean government, plan to pour $590 billion into expanding chip production. Of that total, 800 trillion won goes toward four new factories in the country's southwest, 81 trillion won toward a packaging center, and 30 trillion won over 15 years toward next-generation chips. The initiative is part of President Lee Jae Myung's push to boost regional economic growth, driven by surging demand from AI data centers.
The investments can't come soon enough. According to Jefferies Equity Research (via wccftech), memory prices will jump 40 to 50 percent in Q3 2026 and another 30 to 40 percent in Q4. For 2027, analysts expect a further 40 to 45 percent increase. Relief may not arrive until 2028, when 15 to 20 percent of new capacity comes online. Samsung and SK Hynix together control close to 80 percent of the global market for high-bandwidth memory chips, the kind AI workloads depend on.
Rising memory prices are already pushing up costs across consumer electronics. Apple, for one, has hiked prices on Macs and MacBooks.
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