SK Holdings' investments in the US may be crossing a previously deliberate boundary.
Reuters reported on September 16, quoting three people familiar with the matter, that SK Hynix is discussing with Intel the possibility of manufacturing memory chips in the United States for the first time. One option is to lease part of Intel’s wafer factory in Ohio; a more daring approach would involve SK Hynix, Intel, and large cloud computing companies seeking to secure memory supplies to form a joint venture company. The negotiations are still in the exploratory stage, and it has not been decided whether to produce DRAM, NAND, or other products. SK Hynix subsequently emphasized that no specific cooperation with any particular company has been decided yet, nor is there an finalized plan for memory production in the United States.
In August this year, SK Hynix held a groundbreaking ceremony for its factory in Indiana. The total investment exceeds $4 billion, and it is planned to start mass-producing the next generation HBM in the second half of 2029. This project is marketed as the first “Made in America” HBM facility, but the core DRAM wafers are still manufactured in South Korea and then transported to the United States for advanced packaging and testing. In other words, what the United States gets is a very important part of the HBM industry chain, but it does not obtain SK Hynix’s core front-end wafer manufacturing capabilities.
Now discussing the Ohio project, the nature is different.
If SK Hynix truly moves the manufacturing of DRAM wafers to the United States, then the localization of semiconductors in the US will go beyond simply 'putting the last few critical processes in the US', to actually 'manufacturing the core chips themselves in the US'.
There are both market factors behind this, as well as significant policy pressures.
SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-yung publicly stated in July that the company is under immense pressure from customers and nations to increase chip supply, stating "I believe we need to build a factory in the United States." Meanwhile, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has threatened to impose the maximum 100% tariff on Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor companies without committing to increased domestic production. Reuters reports that Washington has been urging SK Hynix to make further commitments to expand US investments at an accelerated pace.
For SK Hynix, Intel's Ohio factory provides a unique opportunity.
Intel announced in 2022 that it would build a large chip facility there, but the completion of the two factories was delayed to 2030 and 2031. If SK Hynix leases some facilities, it does not need to build its American wafer factories from scratch; Intel can improve asset utilization and reduce the pressure of huge investments. If cloud computing giants also join in, it could even lead to a new AI supply chain model: customers directly participating in upstream capacity construction in exchange for stable supply of HBM and DRAM.
The real challenge lies in South Korea.
DRAM and HBM have been recognized by South Korea as core industry technologies. The South Korean trade department has clearly stated that if investments in the United States involve "core national technologies," they must be subject to scrutiny under the Industrial Technology Protection Act. Additionally, the costs associated with labor, construction, and supply chains for US factories are generally higher than those in South Korea.
Moreover, SK Hynix has no plans to give up Korea. In August this year, the company announced plans to invest approximately 54 trillion Korean won in additional facilities for manufacturing new DRAM and NAND wafers in Yangju and Cheongju.
So, a more accurate understanding is not 'SK Hynix wants to move its production capacity out of South Korea', but rather the United States is gradually raising the barriers to entry into its AI industry chain.
Initially, it was only necessary to sell chips to the United States. Later, there was a requirement to package HBM in the US. Now, the discussion has further expanded to the manufacturing of DRAM wafers.
What the United States wants is for "Korean companies to invest" to be transformed into "Korea's most crucial semiconductor manufacturing capabilities must also be established in the United States."
If SK Hynix finally takes this step, then SK Hynix will not be the only company facing the same problems in the future.
