Until recently, South Korean memory makers’ local presence in the United States was limited to Samsung Electronics’ logic component foundry. SK Hynix decided to organize the packaging of HBM memory chips in Indiana, hoping to build the location into the largest base for this profile in the United States by 2030, surpassing the local Micron Technology.
Image source: SK hynix
exist grand ceremony SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung attended the groundbreaking ceremony of a storage chip packaging plant in Indiana this week and, as expected, talked about the importance of HBM memory in the artificial intelligence boom: “We will provide customers with a new source of American-made HBM memory while strengthening the U.S. semiconductor supply chain and contributing to national and economic security.”. The company will invest $4 billion to build and equip a factory in Indiana, but here HBM wafers will only be tested and packaged, and storage crystals prepared for these operations will be supplied by South Korea. The first “clean room” of the new Indiana plant will be opened in October 2028, and the company will start series packaging of the new generation of HBM memories in the second half of 2029.
SK Hynix entered the U.S. stock market last month and raised $26.5 billion, setting a record for a foreign company’s IPO. Over the past year, SK Hynix’s capital has increased nearly sevenfold to more than $1 trillion. SK Hynix will actively expand memory production in South Korea, but the company has encountered infrastructure problems when looking for new overseas production bases. In Indiana, construction on the new factory officially began in April, but the ceremony is only now taking place. The enterprise will provide work for approximately 1,000 employees; a further 6,000 new jobs will be created during the construction and supply of the new production line. Employees at the Indiana plant will initially be rotated out of South Korea, but will later be replaced by local residents. The local Purdue University will also train talent for companies and will also be tasked with conducting joint research efforts.
By 2030, SK Hynix expects total investment in U.S. industry to exceed $45 billion. In addition to the Indiana plant, funds will be invested in its subsidiary AI Corporation and the Solidigm unit, which will inherit the NAND memory business from Intel in 2020. Indiana’s plan will receive subsidies not only from the federal government ($458 million) but also from the state government ($712 million), which would be the second-largest subsidy in the region’s history. In addition to memory testing and packaging facilities, there will also be a research laboratory to help better customize manufactured memories to the needs of local customers. Nvidia reached a $500 billion agreement with SK Hynix in July, and the two companies will cooperate to develop new memory. SK Hynix is now the global leader in HBM, although it lags behind traditional leader Samsung in the memory market as a whole.
If you find an error, select it with your mouse and press CTRL+ENTER.
