SK Hynix Briefly Surpasses Samsung to Become South Korea's Most Valuable Company
Taylor Wilson
On June 22 SK Hynix's market cap hit KRW 2,082.5 trillion intraday, briefly surpassing Samsung Electronics for the first time ever — a sign that capital markets are repricing the two AI-memory leaders in real time.
What happened?
SK Hynix (SK海力士) rose 5.7% intraday, pushing its market cap to roughly $1.35 trillion. Samsung Electronics (三星电子) gained just 0.4% on the same day.
The gap was razor-thin — KRW 2,082.5 trillion versus KRW 2,081.3 trillion, a lead of only about KRW 1.2 trillion — and lasted only part of the session.
This marked the first time SK Hynix had ever overtaken Samsung, traditionally South Korea's largest listed company by market cap.
Why could SK Hynix close the gap?
SK Hynix is one of the world's leading suppliers of HBM — high-bandwidth memory, a type of high-speed storage built specifically to sit alongside AI chips.
Ongoing AI-infrastructure buildout is driving sustained demand for HBM. This means → whoever holds a secure position in the HBM supply chain sees the share-price benefit first.
In plain terms = the market is placing an ever-higher premium on the ability to reliably ship high-end memory for AI workloads.
What pressure does Samsung face?
Samsung's far smaller gain on the same day reflects a clear divergence in how the market views the two companies' positions in the AI-memory race.
This signals that investors still have a question mark over Samsung's HBM mass-production timeline and customer-qualification progress.
Whether Samsung can reopen a market-cap lead depends on two things: catching up on HBM production pace and securing major customer certifications.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.