SEOUL/SINGAPORE – SK Hynix is being aggressively courted by big global tech firms with offers to invest in its new production lines and fund purchases of pricey manufacturing tools as they rush to secure memory chips, people familiar with the matter said.
The offers, unprecedented in the global memory chip industry, underscore the severity of the component’s scarcity around the world, as chipmakers struggle to keep pace with surging demand amid an artificial intelligence boom. Memory chips are critical parts in AI data centres, smartphones, PCs and other areas.
The firm’s customers have been proposing a range of offers to the South Korean chipmaker, including investing in dedicated memory production lines, six people said.
Another proposal involved customers financing equipment purchases such as ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which are used to print circuits onto silicon wafers and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, three of the people said.
But the chipmaker, flush with cash, is cautious about taking financial commitments from customers, as such deals could hold it hostage to specific buyers and require it to supply chips at lower prices in exchange for securing longer-term and more stable revenue guarantees, two people said.
“Regardless of the type of offer, available capacity is essentially zero right now,” one of the sources said. “There isn’t even a small portion that can be designated for a specific customer.”
Another person said one proposal was pitched at the first phase of a large fabrication plant that SK Hynix is building in its Yongin complex in South Korea, where dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) is likely to be the dominant focus.
SK Hynix declined to provide details regarding contract conditions with its customers, but said “we are comprehensively reviewing various approaches and structural alternatives that differ from conventional long-term agreements.”
The company, Asia’s third-most valuable firm by market value after TSMC and Samsung, saw its shares soar 154 per cent in 2026 to a record, thanks to growing investor bets on AI.
It was not immediately clear which global tech giants were making investment offers to SK Hynix.
Major US tech firms including Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft last week unveiled plans to boost spending on AI infrastructure.
“We are investing aggressively to meet our infrastructure needs,” Meta said during an earnings conference call, adding that this includes “striking deals throughout the supply chain to secure necessary components for future capacity.”
Also on a call, Microsoft said it expects its capital expenditures to rise to US$190 billion (S$241 billion) in 2026, including US$25 billion attributable to rising costs of components like chips. REUTERS
