In a bid to meet the memory supply crisis head on, SK Hynix announces it will invest nearly $13 billion into fresh AI packaging facility

SK Hynix has announced this week it will invest 19 trillion won (or $12.90 billion) into a new advanced chip packaging facility in Cheongju, South Korea—and it isn't the only company making multi-billion dollar moves to meet the demands of the raging memory supply crisis.

SK Hynix is one of Nvidia's leading suppliers of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for its AI accelerators. The planned chip packaging facility is set to begin construction this April, but won't be able to address demand until after work is complete in late 2027 (via Bloomberg). This follows news last year of the company committing an additional $500 billion to building four new memory fabs, with the first of these aiming for a similar 2027 completion window.

Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Hynix's parent group, SK Group, recently spoke during a keynote speech at the SK AI Summit in Seoul, saying, "We have entered an era in which supply is facing a bottleneck. We are receiving memory chip supply requests from many companies, and we are thinking hard about how to address all demands.”

With the limited flow of memory now actively restricting how many data centres can be built, it's not the only company announcing plans to address the situation. Memory maker Micron, too, has just announced plans for a massive megafab, this time in New York.

Apparently not wanting to be outdone on AI's world stage, the planned semiconductor manufacturing facility will be the largest in the US, with Micron investing $100 billion into the project set to break ground in Onondaga County "following rigorous environmental review and necessary permit approvals."

Micron shut down their consumer sub-brand Crucial in favour of focussing on supplying AI data centres, though the release of the Micron 3610 NVMe SSD has since suggested the company still wants to keep a toe in the consumer space moving forward. Still, like many memory manufacturers, it sees that economic winds remain favourable for AI acceleration (SK Hynix predicts the HBM market will, on average, grow about 30% every year between 2025 and 2030, according to Reuters).

"Breaking ground at Micron’s New York megafab is a pivotal moment for Micron and the United States," Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said, "I want to thank President Trump, Secretary Lutnick, Administrator Zeldin, Governor Hochul, Senator Schumer, Congressman Mannion, Congresswoman Tenney, County Executive McMahon and all of our partners in the Administration and Congress for their leadership and partnership in getting to this milestone."

He adds, "As the global economy enters the AI era, leadership in advanced semiconductors will be the cornerstone in innovation and economic prosperity. Our investments and progress solidify our position as the only United States manufacturer of memory."

But even with all of these billions from two major memory makers, there's little use hoping the memory crisis will be alleviated before the end of this year. For one thing, all of these builds will take more than the year to complete and are not really geared towards meeting consumer demand. But for another, even with memory production scaling up, the demand coming from AI data centres is growing even faster, with some industry observers predicting the memory supply crisis could run into 2028 and beyond.

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