SK Hynix Posts Record 406% Profit Jump on AI Chip Surge
Synopsis
SK Hynix has posted its strongest quarterly performance ever, with operating profit soaring 406% to 37.6 trillion won ($25.4 billion). On April 22, 2026, the South Korean chipmaker revealed that the massive AI infrastructure boom has pushed its operating margins to a record 72%. As the primary supplier of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to Nvidia, SK Hynix is benefiting from a tenfold increase in memory prices over the last year. With the industry shifting toward agentic AI, the company plans to build new fabs in Korea and the U.S. to maintain its 50% market share in the world's most critical AI hardware
SK Hynix, an important supplier of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to Nvidia had its best-ever first quarter in 2026. Profits surged over 400%, according to market estimates, as the appetite for the chips behind the international artificial intelligence craze continued.
Key Highlights
- Operating Profit of SK Hyunix skyrocketed 406% to 37.6 trillion won.
- Revenue jumped 198% to an all-time high of 52.6 trillion won ($37.9 billion).
- Operating Margin was 72%, a company record.
- Shifting demand from AI training to agentic AI (real-time reasoning).
- Prices of DRAM (Used in HBM) were up to 10 times higher than last year.
Record-Breaking Results and Timing
SK Hynix Inc. unveiled its best earnings ever since its establishment in 1983. Even though the first quarter is usually a slow quarter for technology hardware, its operating profit nearly doubled from the previous quarter. The utilisation numbers are so staggering partly because of the “AI infrastructure” race happening now, with companies like Nvidia buying up every last high-end memory chip out there, to fuel their latest data centres. Its quarterly revenue of over 50 trillion won also made it a full-fledged AI memory market leader.
Origins of the profit jump and what products did it?
The 406% increase in these profits is mainly due to the price and volume of high bandwidth memory (HBM). Market data shows the average price of DRAM in these chips was $13 by the end of the quarter, ten times the just $1.35 from a year ago. SK Hynix dominates about 50-60% of the HBM market, according to a source with knowledge of the matter and is Nvidia’s go-to partner for HBM. HBM was the biggest beneficiary, but high-capacity server DRAM and enterprise Solid State Drives (eSSDs), which store the massive amount of data AI models use to be trained on, also experienced driving factors.
SK Hynix interestingly pointed out that we are in an Agentic AI era. By this, we mean truly advanced AI systems that work instead of just using chat and actually reason in real time from multiple services to finish complex tasks. This transition takes even more memory than what was needed in conventional AI training, implying that the existing chip deficit will linger. The company has huge capital expenditure plans to establish new chip factories (fabs) at home in South Korea and also in the United States, where it will face greater competition from key rivals Samsung and Micron.
Expert Take and Future Outlook
SK Hynix’s 72% operating margin is almost unheard of for the low-margin hardware industry, analysts said. The company has evolved into a high-margin tech giant by focusing on high-value-added products rather than just commodity chips. With the demand for AI changing, some experts note that the foundation for memory demand is increasingly spread across every sector of a business.
FAQs
- How much did SK Hynix’s profit rise by?
Operating profit increased 406 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier, to 37.6 trillion won.
- Why is SK Hynix so critical for Nvidia?
The HBM chips stacked on top of Nvidia’s GPUs are made by SK Hynix. NVIDIA’s AI chips can not operate at the speeds demanded by modern AI without this memory.
- What is “Agentic AI”?
It is a smarter form of AI that can both solve problems and perform tasks in real-time autonomously, not only generating text and images.
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