SK Hynix Stock Jumps 12% as AI Chip Demand Pushes Market Cap to $1 Trillion

TLDR

• SK Hynix jumped over 12% on Wednesday, hitting a record high and crossing a $1 trillion market cap
• The company is now the second South Korean firm to reach the trillion-dollar club, after Samsung
• SK Hynix joins Micron, which crossed the same milestone just one day earlier on Tuesday
• Demand for High-Bandwidth Memory chips has tightened supply across the industry through 2026
• SK Hynix stock is up more than 248% year to date in 2026, following a 200%+ rally in 2025

SK Hynix crossed a $1 trillion market cap on Wednesday after its stock jumped more than 12% to a record high of 2.28 million won ($1,514.38).

That pushed the company’s total market value to roughly 1,624 trillion won, or $1.08 trillion.

The move made SK Hynix the second South Korean company to hit that milestone, following Samsung Electronics, which crossed the mark earlier this month.

It also came just hours after Micron Technology hit the same threshold on Tuesday — making this the first time all three of the world’s largest memory chip makers have held trillion-dollar valuations at the same time.

HBM Supply Is the Bottleneck

The rally across all three companies ties back to one thing: High-Bandwidth Memory.

HBM chips are a core component inside AI processors, and demand has surged as AI training and inference workloads scale up rapidly.

SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung are among the very few manufacturers capable of producing advanced HBM at scale, and their combined production is already allocated through the end of 2026.

That supply crunch has pushed chip prices higher, which flows directly to the bottom line of all three companies.

Both SK Hynix and Samsung hold supply contracts with Nvidia, the dominant player in AI accelerator hardware.

A Month of Trillion-Dollar Milestones

May 2026 has turned into a landmark month for the memory chip sector.

Samsung crossed the $1 trillion mark first. Micron followed on Tuesday. SK Hynix confirmed the hat-trick on Wednesday.

SK Hynix is now the third Asian company to reach a $1 trillion valuation overall, behind Samsung and TSMC, which remains the continent’s most valuable company at over $2 trillion.

Meanwhile, Micron is now the 11th-largest public company in the United States.

The stock has become one of the key drivers of this year’s semiconductor rally, helping push the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite to record highs.

SK Hynix stock has gained more than 248% year to date in 2026. Samsung is up around 165%, and Micron has risen more than 210% over the same period.

Those numbers follow an already strong 2025, when SK Hynix posted a rally of over 200%.

The post SK Hynix Stock Jumps 12% as AI Chip Demand Pushes Market Cap to $1 Trillion appeared first on CoinCentral.