South Korea's SK hynix said Wednesday second-quarter net profit soared a whopping 1,242 percent year-on-year, driven by the artificial intelligence industry's explosive demand for its advanced memory chips.SK hynix is a specialist supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips to US industry behemoth Nvidia and a pillar of South Korea's tech-led economy.
The global race to build data centers hosting AI infrastructure has seen a meteoric rise in the firm's fortunes, despite concern the sector may be overvalued in a market bubble.
Wednesday's earnings figures, including quarterly net profit of 94 trillion won (US$64 billion), were described in a statement by the Icheon-headquartered firm as "an all-time high quarterly performance".
"We are aware of concerns that AI infrastructure investment might be slowing down," marketing chief of the AI microchip division Park Joon-deok said on a call with investors and reporters.
He cited jitters over firms exploring data center rental, rather than construction, and the emergence of new high-efficiency AI requiring a lower memory task load.
