Memory specialist SK Hynix has already sold out its entire production capacity for certain memory chips for 2026, due to immense demand.
SK Hynix cannot keep up with the number of orders. The South Korean memory producer has already sold out the production capacity of its main memory chips for 2026. This includes DRAM, NAND, and HBM capacity: in short, all major memory chips for computers, (AI) servers, and accelerators.
SK Hynix, alongside Samsung, is one of the largest memory producers in the world. More than half of the available HBM memory comes from an SK Hynix production line. Samsung accounts for a quarter of HBM production, and Micron handles the rest.
Volatile Market
Memory is consistently a volatile market. Demand rises and falls much faster than production lines can be turned on and off. A few years ago, this led to overproduction and rock-bottom prices. Today, the hunger for AI-related hardware is causing the opposite movement. AI training and inference require a lot of memory, with accelerators and systems being equipped with immense amounts of RAM. For the most high-end chips, this involves HBM, but DRAM and classic NAND memory for SSDs also play a role.
The demand for HBM memory continues to rise. The finish line is moving at a high pace, making it impossible for producers to keep up at the moment. According to Counterpoint, the global market is expected to be worth around 43 billion dollars by 2027.