On August 7, SK Hynix announced plans to invest 54 trillion won (approximately 256.63 billion yuan) to expand its chip factories in South Korea. The company stated that it is building new chip factories in Yongin and Cheongju, South Korea, to meet the "growing demand for memory chips in the age of artificial intelligence." Market research firm Omdia predicts that demand for DRAM and NAND will maintain a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19% from last year to 2030. Omdia believes this growth is not a temporary supercycle, but a structural transformation, where memory will transcend its role as a simple component and become a core infrastructure determining the performance of artificial intelligence. SK Hynix pointed out that in the AI era, technological competitiveness alone is insufficient to maintain an advantage; the ability to deliver sufficient quantities of products at the time customers require is the true competitive advantage.
This investment decision was made after a thorough assessment of market demand. The company stated that Yongin Y2 is the second of four wafer fabs being built sequentially within the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, with a total construction area of approximately 341,000 pyeong (approximately 1.13 million square meters). It will be operational as a DRAM production base. The project is scheduled to commence construction in July next year, with the first cleanroom expected to open in June 2029, primarily producing next-generation DRAM products such as HBM. Currently, the Y1 wafer fab construction is progressing smoothly, with the first cleanroom expected to open in February next year. With the accelerated popularization of AI services, NAND flash memory demand is rapidly growing, primarily driven by enterprise-grade solid-state drives (eSSDs). Simultaneously, the demand for key-value caching in AI inference processes is further increasing, coupled with the gradual implementation of agentic and physical AI applications, the application scenarios for NAND flash memory are expected to expand further. SK Hynix stated that the company chose to build its new NAND flash memory production base in Cheongju because it can accelerate the construction of the new wafer fab.
The Cheongju campus has already completed the M11, M12, and M15 NAND flash memory production facilities. The new wafer fab can synergize and enhance efficiency with existing production lines. Meanwhile, the site, power, and water infrastructure are also largely in place. The Cheongju M17 wafer fab has a total construction area of approximately 206,000 pyeong (approximately 680,000 square meters), with construction scheduled to begin in February next year and the first cleanroom to open in December 2028. The investment period will continue until April 2031 and will be implemented in phases according to business progress.
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