SK Hynix Settles Hanmi Standoff, Weighs Intel Ohio Tie-Up in Busy Week for Memory Giant

SK Hynix ended its standoff with Hanmi Semiconductor, resumed equipment trade at Icheon, and confirmed early US manufacturing talks with Intel.

SK Hynix ended a roughly month-long dispute with its key equipment supplier Hanmi Semiconductor this week, restoring stability to the production lines that feed its high-bandwidth memory business — just as the company confirmed it is exploring US manufacturing options and launched a new venture arm.

Service technicians from Hanmi have returned to SK Hynix's Icheon facility, and trading in production equipment is resuming. The standoff mattered because Hanmi supplies more than 90% of the TC bonders SK Hynix needs to build advanced HBM stacks. Roughly 30% of SK Hynix's revenue is tied directly to HBM module shipments to Nvidia, while Hanmi draws more than half of its own sales from SK Hynix. With order books across the semiconductor industry running full, a prolonged halt in equipment maintenance could have jeopardized contractual delivery deadlines for graphics processors.

Shares closed Friday at KRW 1,839,000 on the Seoul exchange, a daily gain of 5.4%. A separate report put the stock's advance at 6.4% to KRW 1,857,000, with the technology sector also drawing support from falling oil prices and easing US Treasury yields. The stock is up 183% since the start of the year, a reflection of the company's strong position in AI memory chips.

US Manufacturing Talks With Intel

Reuters reported that SK Hynix is holding early exploratory talks with Intel about semiconductor production on American soil. The discussions cover using part of Intel's planned Ohio fab or forming a joint venture with major cloud providers. For the South Korean group, it would mark a first step toward owning chip manufacturing capacity in the US. SK Hynix confirmed it is seeking options to strengthen global competitiveness and that talks over US memory partnerships are ongoing, but stressed that no concrete structure or final contract exists yet.

Separately, US subsidiary Solidigm is considering building a NAND flash plant, with New York state seen as the frontrunner. Solidigm currently produces NAND exclusively at its Dalian site in China.

Venture Arm Debuts as Japan Speculation Laid to Rest

SK Hynix also moved to broaden its innovation footprint. On Friday it launched "SK hynix Ventures," a corporate venture capital brand aimed at consolidating investments and partnerships across the global artificial intelligence ecosystem. CEO Kwak Noh-Jung traveled to Silicon Valley with other executives for the inaugural SK hynix Ventures Day to meet venture capitalists and startups.

The same day, in a mandatory regulatory filing with the Seoul exchange, the company addressed speculation about a Japanese expansion. SK Hynix said it continuously reviews additional production locations but had not made any decision on building a semiconductor fab in Japan as of the reporting date.

Domestic Spending and Buybacks Underpin the Story

The international plans complement a massive buildout at home. On August 7, SK Hynix announced KRW 54 trillion in investments for two new manufacturing complexes — KRW 35.2 trillion for the "Y2" plant in Yongin and KRW 19.1 trillion for the "M17" facility in Cheongju.

Management is pairing that spending with generous shareholder returns. In August, the board approved the buyback and full cancellation of treasury shares worth KRW 40 trillion for the 2025 to 2027 period.

Demand Forecasts Stay Bullish

Broader memory market projections lend support. Required volume is expected to expand to 2.8 times the 2026 level by 2028, and Citi expects persistent supply shortages for memory through 2031.

Industry watchers are only partly swayed by concerns that AI development is slowing. Analyst Kim Un-ho of IBK Investment & Securities points to the growing use of autonomous AI agents as an independent source of demand for dynamic random-access memory. Investment in the necessary computing power should therefore continue steadily. At the AI Infrastructure Summit, SK Hynix presented new memory architectures including PIM, SALT-KV and HBF.