World's second-largest memory chip maker benefits from US tariff policy

SK Hynix's head of global sales and marketing, Lee Sang-rak, said at the company's annual shareholders' meeting that the "early order" effect and reduced customer inventories have created favorable market conditions for the company recently. However, he stressed that it is still unclear whether the trend will continue.

Partners are urging SK Hynix to deliver quickly to avoid new tariffs expected to be imposed on semiconductors by the Trump administration.

In January, SK Hynix predicted that its DRAM and NAND flash memory chip exports would fall 10% to 20% in the first quarter of this year from the previous quarter. According to media reports, U.S. memory chipmakers Micron, SanDisk, and China's YMTC have recently raised memory chip prices, partly due to strong demand from the artificial intelligence (AI) market.

US President Donald Trump announced in February that he planned to impose tariffs on imports of semiconductors and other goods of “around 25%”. “Concerns that the US could impose tariffs on semiconductors as early as April have led to an advance move of semiconductor inventory to the US,” Nomura said in a report this week.

“It remains to be seen whether the tariffs will actually be imposed; if they do, it could lead to higher prices for fixed products, which could dampen demand,” the report added.

Memory chips are a vital type of data storage chip that can be found in countless devices from smartphones to laptops. For years, Samsung has been the leader in this technology, far ahead of its South Korean rival SK Hynix and US company Micron.

However, as AI applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have grown in popularity, the underlying infrastructure needed to train massive models has become a bigger focus. Nvidia has emerged as a leading player in the space, with its graphics processing units (GPUs) becoming the gold standard used by tech giants around the world for AI training.

SK Hynix, a major supplier to AI chip leader Nvidia, expects demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to “explode” this year, thanks to investments in data centers.

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung told shareholders that the company's HBM chip sales are expected to more than double this year. "Our HBM sales for 2025 are sold out, and we expect to finalize agreements with customers for 2026 shipments in the first half of this year to further strengthen revenue stability," Kwak Noh-Jung said.

Despite concerns in early January about slowing spending on AI hardware after Chinese startup DeepSeek said it had developed AI models that rivaled Western ones at a much lower cost, Nvidia signaled last month that demand for its AI chips remained steady.

Kwak believes that the emergence of DeepSeek will ultimately benefit SK Hynix. "This could have a positive impact on mid- to long-term demand for AI memory chips. From our perspective, DeepSeek does not slow down demand for high-performance accelerators or HBM," Kwak Noh-Jung added.

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/nha-san-xuat-chip-nho-lon-thu-hai-the-gioi-huong-loi-tu-chinh-sach-thue-quan-cua-my-192250327185331556.htm