On October 28th, 2018, Samsung’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
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Stocks of Korean chip heavyweight Samsung Electronics and Sk Hynix surged on Thursday. This is the day after the two companies partnered with Artificial Intelligence Major Openai as part of the US Stargate initiative.
Samsung shares reached its highest since January 2021, rising above 4%, while SK Hynix stocks skyrocketed over 9%. It’s the best since 2000.
In a statement, Openai said the partnership will “focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and increasing the capacity of South Korea’s data centers.”
ChatGpt-Maker said the two Korean companies plan to expand production of sophisticated memory chips, which are important to enhance the power of their AI models.
The announcement came when he met with South Korean president Lee Jae-mun in Seoul and top leaders of Samsung and SK Hynix.
Openai has also signed a series of agreements to investigate the development of next-generation AI data centers in Korea, including the Ministry of Science and ICT, Telecommunications Operator SK Telecom, and Samsung subsidiary.
Earlier this month, SK Hynix announced it was ready to mass-produce the next generation of high-bandwidth memory chips, solidifying its major position in the AI value chain. HBM is a kind of memory used in artificial intelligence computing chipsets, including chips from SK Hynix’s major client, Global Ai Giant Nvidia.
The HBM4 chip is expected to become the major AI memory chip needed for NVIDIA’s next-generation Rubin architecture. This is the more powerful AI chip in the global data center.
SK Hynix is Nvidia’s main chip supplier, and rival Samsung is reportedly working to get HBM4 chip certification by Nvidia.
Samsung has traditionally been a market leader in memory, but its position is threatened by SK Hynix, which led the HBM space. A July report from Counterpoint Research found that SK Hynix was catching up with Samsung’s memory revenue in the second quarter, with both competing for top positions in the global memory market.
Samsung’s second quarter revenue missed forecasts as profits from the chip business fell nearly 94% year-on-year, but Chief Financial Officer Soon-Cheol Park said the company is hoping for a rebound later in the year.
– CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report.
