Micron and SK Hynix: Chipmakers now worth over $1 trillion

Although GenZ is already losing trust in AI and the use of LLMs is already declining, at least in the USA, the AI ​​wave continues to roll unstoppably on the markets. The future of the Internet belongs to AI agents and tokens are the new currency, writes Katja Scherer in the cover story of the current issue of magazine.

What is absolutely necessary for this is the required computing power – and with it powerful RAM that can quickly process the extreme demand for tokens. The market is already in a storage crisis that could last for years.

Two market-leading manufacturers of memory chips are benefiting from rising share prices: for the first time, SK Hynix and Micron are now each worth over a trillion US dollars.

Trillion rally of memory chip manufacturers

The value refers to the market capitalization, which results from the current total value of all shares issued. SK Hynix’s share prices have recently risen by 11 percent and Micron’s by 19 percent. As part of the ongoing rally, Samsung also broke the trillion mark just a few weeks ago.

The two South Korean manufacturers Samsung and SK Hynix are the biggest beneficiaries of the memory chip shortage. According to Heise, the price of a single SK Hynix share has doubled since the beginning of March. The success is no coincidence: With the flash division acquired by Intel, the South Korean company has “positioned itself as a central supplier to Nvidia,” writes Wall Street Online. “So exactly where a large part of the global AI imagination is currently concentrated.”

The current price jump at US manufacturer Micron is the result of a statement from the major Swiss bank UBS on Tuesday. It predicts that “the price for shares in the US company will more than triple compared to the previous assumption,” said Heise.

Micron CEO: “Memory is a strategic asset”

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in an interview with CNBC in early May that demand for NAND and SSD should continue to grow. The problem: Production capacities “cannot be ramped up so easily and in the short term”. SK Hynix and Samsung also warn that bottlenecks in memory production will remain in the next few years.

Despite all the euphoria among investors, analysts are warning of increased volatility “should supply chains stall or global investment in data centers slow down,” according to Wall Street Online. It is far from certain that the trillion-dollar rally among chip manufacturers will continue.