SK Hynix Chases a Trillion-Dollar Crown Jewel, With a Strike Windfall and a Homegrown Revolt in Tow

SK Hynix rides AI demand to near $1 trillion market cap, aided by Samsung strike, while facing own labor dispute and planning $14B US IPO.

The South Korean memory giant has ridden the artificial intelligence wave to within striking distance of a $1 trillion market capitalization. SK Hynix’s shares have surged 158% since the start of the year, closing at 1,745,000 Won and pushing its valuation to roughly $948 billion. That leap has been fueled by a record operating profit of 45 trillion Won and a dominant position in high-bandwidth memory — the specialized chips that power the world’s most advanced AI processors.

Yet the company’s ascent is playing out against a backdrop of competing labor dramas, one that hands it a strategic advantage and another that threatens to tarnish its image at home.

The immediate tailwind comes from its archrival Samsung Electronics, where some 45,000 workers are set to walk off the job on May 21 for an 18-day strike. The walkout threatens to disrupt the already tight supply of memory chips, and tech giants such as Apple are actively scouting alternative suppliers. JPMorgan estimates Samsung could lose more than 4 trillion Won in semiconductor revenue from the stoppage — roughly 1% of the division’s annual sales. For SK Hynix, the timing could barely be better: the company is already racing to bring new capacity online, pulling forward the opening of the first clean room at its Yongin cluster from May 2027 to February 2027. That single fab is absorbing 31 trillion Won of investment.

But while SK Hynix benefits from its rival’s labor strife, it faces a brewing legal challenge of its own. The union representing workers at logistics subcontractor P&S Logis is preparing legal action under South Korea’s recently enacted Yellow Envelope Act, which allows direct collective bargaining between a subcontractor’s employees and the parent company. The flashpoint is bonus disparity: SK Hynix’s full-time staff has received bonuses worth millions of Won — a new policy pegs payouts at up to 10% of operating profit with no cap — while subcontractor workers received just 5-6 million Won. The union accuses the company of performance-based discrimination.

The tension has not slowed SK Hynix’s expansion drive. Management has outlined plans for a U.S. initial public offering in the second half of 2026, aiming to raise as much as $14 billion for new plants in South Korea and Indiana. On the technology front, the company will ship samples of its next-generation HBM4E chips in the second half of this year, with mass production slated for 2027.

Analysts expect the stock to keep climbing. KB Securities recently lifted its price target to 3 million Won, betting on a sharp rise in DRAM prices in 2026. With new industry production lines unlikely to come online before 2027, long-term supply agreements are already locking in steady revenue for SK Hynix. The gap with Samsung, both in earnings and in market perception, appears set to widen further in the months ahead.