On January 26, 2024, the SK Hynix flag (R) and the Korean national flag (L) fly outside the Bundang office in Seongnam City.
Jung Young Jae | AFP | Getty Images
SK Hynix maintained its lead in high-bandwidth memory used in artificial intelligence chips, surpassing rival Samsung Electronics in operating profit for the first time in 2025.
This week, two Korean memory manufacturers faced off, with SK Hynix announcing its financial results on Wednesday and Samsung announcing its financial results on Thursday morning local time.
SK Hynix recorded full-year operating profit of 47.2 trillion won, exceeding Samsung’s 43.6 trillion won. The comparison highlights SK Hynix’s position in South Korea’s technology sector since its acquisition by SK Telecom in 2012 for about $3 billion.
SK Hynix focuses almost entirely on memory chips, while Samsung operates multiple businesses, including consumer electronics and contract chip manufacturing. Samsung’s memory division generated approximately 24.9 trillion won in operating profit in 2025.
SK Hynix’s success is primarily due to its strong position as the world leader in high bandwidth memory (HBM). HBM is a specialized chip used in AI processors and servers. Nvidia.
“SK Hynix is clearly the standout ‘AI winner’ in Asia,” said MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, adding that the company’s lead in the quality and supply of HBM and other chips used in AI servers is critical at this stage of the AI infrastructure boom.
Despite Samsung regaining the top spot in the memory revenue rankings in the fourth quarter of 2025, SK Hynix maintains its market lead in both areas, Hwang said.
However, competition is increasing.
Last year, SK Hynix took an early lead in HBM and secured the bulk of the Nvidia memory contract, but competitors such as Samsung and Micron continue to make strides.
Samsung said it is expanding sales of HBM and is on track to launch HBM4 products, its latest 6th generation HBM technology, this year.
“(People) expect Samsung to make a big turnaround with NVIDIA’s new product HBM4 and overcome last year’s quality issues,” said Ray Wang, an analyst specializing in memory and AI supply chain at Semianalysis.
Still, analysts expect SK Hynix to maintain a high market share and maintain its dominant position in HBM4.
“The competition for HBM4 is actually between SK Hynix and Samsung, because we think those two companies are more competitive than Micron,” Wang said.
He further added, “While SK Hynix will maintain its lead with HBM4, we expect Samsung to make significant progress with HBM4 and become more competitive than the (previous generation).”
SK Hynix has secured more than two-thirds of HBM supply orders for Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin products, according to local media reports on Wednesday.
Counterpoint estimated in December that SK Hynix led the HBM market with a 57% revenue share, compared to Samsung’s 22% revenue share in the third quarter of last year.
SK Hynix also outperformed Samsung in the broader DRAM market. DRAM or Dynamic Random Access Memory is a memory chip used for temporary data storage in computing devices such as PCs, servers, and data centers.
