SK Hynix Chairman Says He Wants to Open Chipmaking Plant in the U.S.

It looks like even more chipmaking capacity may be coming to the U.S.:

SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the company’s advanced HBM packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana, on Aug. 27, where SK hynix plans to begin producing “Made in USA” HBM from the second half of 2029. (SK hynix)

“I think we need to build a factory in the United States. If possible, I believe we should build it,” SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said in July, describing the “enormous pressure” from customers and governments to supply more memory chips. SK hynix was already preparing a US production base, but only for the later stages of making its most valuable artificial intelligence memory.

Its more than $4 billion Indiana plant, which broke ground last month, will receive advanced DRAM wafers made in South Korea and package and turn them into high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, from 2029. The memory chips themselves will still be fabricated in Korea.

The question now is whether SK hynix is willing to move part of the chipmaking itself to the US. Reuters reported Sept. 16 that SK hynix was discussing a bigger step, either leasing part of Intel’s Ohio complex to produce memory chips or forming a venture with Intel and major cloud companies seeking secure supplies. Two days later, Solidigm, SK hynix’s US NAND subsidiary, was reported to be considering a separate NAND plant in the US.

Korea Herald

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