Memory maker SK Hynix’s profit jump shows AI demand is going strong

South Korean reminiscence maker SK Hynix returned to profitability within the first quarter after final yr’s downturn with flying colours backed by the AI growth.

The chipmaker stated on Thursday that it recorded 2.88 trillion received in working revenue within the January-March quarter, beating estimates of South Korean analysts by near 40%. Its income additionally surged 144.3% to 12.42 trillion received, reflecting robust gross sales for reminiscence chips throughout the board.

SK Hynix is the primary provider of high-bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) to Nvidia for his or her AI chip platform. HBM consists of a number of DRAM dies stacked vertically, offering the excessive pace wanted in AI chips.

The recognition of AI providers akin to ChatGPT is fueling demand for reminiscence chips to servers that again them up. Compatriot Samsung can also be seeing a requirement growth because it expects its revenue to surge 900% in the identical quarter.

SK Hynix stated it was rising gross sales of merchandise for AI servers whereas additionally seeing excessive demand for premium embedded solid-state drives, which allowed its NAND enterprise to return to profitability.

SK Hynix stated it plans to safe extra clients for HBM3E, which went into manufacturing in March, going ahead whereas additionally specializing in different high-end DRAM merchandise akin to DDR5 aimed toward servers.

In the meantime, the corporate introduced a day earlier than that it plans to spend over 20 trillion received ($14.5 billion) to construct a brand new chip manufacturing facility, known as M15X, devoted to DRAM manufacturing in Cheongju, South Korea, which is able to begin mass manufacturing in 2025.