GoKawiil
Tech News
Elon Musk's Terafab, a Tesla-SpaceX joint venture, has reportedly informed chip equipment makers it aims to produce 1 million wafers per month after 2032, with about 700,000 allocated to memory and over 300,000 to logic chips, according to Financial News. Terafab's procurement team has visited Japan asking some suppliers for delivery within months, and is targeting volume production in the second half of 2028.
Major Asian tech and chip stocks sold off sharply Friday after the Nasdaq Composite fell 5.5% overnight and entered correction territory. SK Hynix, Samsung, TSMC, SoftBank, Advantest and Tokyo Electron all posted double-digit or near-double-digit losses, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropping 12.2% in the prior session.
A chip design firm reportedly builds deliberately weak server processors that fall below U.S. and South Korean export-control thresholds, then pairs them with high-end HBM memory from Samsung and SK hynix that is otherwise banned for export to China. The bundled chips are shipped to Hong Kong and carried across the border into Shenzhen, where workshops desolder the boards to extract the valuable HBM and discard the rest, according to The Information.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a surprise visit to South Korea over the weekend, meeting roughly 50 Samsung affiliate executives in Yongin and reportedly lunching with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won alongside SK Hynix and SK Telecom executives. The talks reportedly touched on AI chip cooperation, high-bandwidth memory supply and data center development, building on partnerships Altman announced during an October 2025 visit under OpenAI's Stargate initiative.
SK Hynix reported Q3 2026 revenue of 104.6 trillion won ($78 billion), up 32% from the prior quarter, with operating profit of 83.3 trillion won and net profit of 39.8 trillion won, marking the first time it has topped 100 trillion won in quarterly revenue. The company credited surging DDR5 server memory sales, early HBM4 shipments, and growing NAND demand, and said it expects memory shortages driven by AI infrastructure buildout to continue for years.
SK Hynix's New York-listed shares surged more than 13% following better-than-expected quarterly results and an upbeat forecast, sending other chipmakers like Micron, Arm and AMD higher as well. The company reported revenue about 6% above estimates, gross margins of 85.7%, and forecast shipment growth accelerating to the mid-20% range, while saying production is largely committed through 2029.
Solidigm, SK hynix's US subsidiary, is reportedly negotiating with the Commerce Department over a $45 billion flash memory factory planned for the United States. According to Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, the company wants permission to export upgrade equipment to its existing NAND plant in Dalian, China, arguing that upgraded output there would help finance the new US facility. It remains unclear how officials have responded or whether the export request will be approved.
Memory and data storage stocks, including Micron, SanDisk and SK Hynix, rose today after pulling back from record highs reached this summer. The gains follow a stretch of declines for memory chip makers in recent weeks.
SK Hynix has told customers that RAM and flash memory shortages, driven largely by AI demand, are likely to continue through at least 2030. Apple is reportedly among 14 major tech companies with long-term priority supply agreements, but these contracts include clauses allowing SK Hynix to raise prices in line with market conditions.
SK Hynix reported that net profit more than tripled in the third quarter, with revenue and operating profit reaching record highs for a sixth consecutive quarter. The South Korean memory-chip maker announced plans to return $75 billion to shareholders following the results.
SK Hynix reported third-quarter revenue of 104.62 trillion won and operating profit of 83.33 trillion won, both well above analyst estimates compiled by LSEG. Revenue grew 327.9% and operating profit 632.1% from a year earlier, driven largely by sales of high-bandwidth memory chips used in AI systems. The results follow an August announcement of a 40 trillion won share buyback and cancellation plan alongside a higher shareholder return target.
SK hynix confirmed it will build a new US fab for its subsidiary Solidigm to expand production of 3D QLC NAND flash used in high-capacity enterprise SSDs, as AI-driven demand strains existing capacity. However, the company has shelved plans for a Solidigm IPO or pre-IPO funding round, citing market volatility and a semiconductor stock correction. No timeline, output figures, or financing plan have been disclosed.