South Korea has a new corporate king. SK Hynix has overtaken Samsung Electronics to become the country's most valuable listed company, ending a reign that Samsung held for 25 years, according to Android Authority and the Free Press Journal.
The milestone was driven by booming demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that power artificial intelligence systems. SK Hynix is a key supplier to Nvidia, the dominant maker of AI processors, a relationship multiple outlets including Benzinga point to as central to its rise.
The numbers are striking. According to the Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Kao, SK Hynix shares closed up 5.6%, lifting its market capitalization to roughly $1.4 trillion, with the precise figure cited at $1.362 trillion. The Journal also reports that South Korea's benchmark Kospi index is up 117% so far this year, underscoring how an AI-fueled investor rush is reshaping the market. Some accounts, such as MSN's, note SK Hynix had at points only "briefly" surpassed its larger rival.
Firstpost frames the moment as one of South Korea's most remarkable corporate turnarounds, describing a company that went "from near-bankruptcy to chip king." For decades, Samsung was the unquestioned symbol of Korean industrial might; being eclipsed by a specialist memory-chip maker marks a generational shift.
Why it matters: the changing of the guard is a vivid sign that the AI boom is now powerful enough to rewrite the pecking order of entire national economies, rewarding the firms that supply the memory chips AI depends on.