SK Hynix’s capital expenditure in 2026 will rise significantly from 30.2 trillion won in 2025, executives said without elaborating. Last month, the company announced a plan to spend the equivalent of $8 billion on cutting-edge extreme ultraviolet lithography chipmaking tools from ASML Holding NV. Larger rival Samsung plans to spend more than $73 billion on chip capacity expansion and research this year, devoting a record amount of capital toward an effort to seize the lead in AI semiconductors.

SK Hynix has moved forward by three months the opening of the first clean rooms at its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster to Feb. 2027, officials said.

“Memory has become so critical that customers now view memory, price and supply uncertainties as key business risks,” an SK Hynix executive said during a call, adding clients are now prioritizing procurement over price.

SK Hynix is trying to shift some of its contracts with major customers to multi-year agreements, they said.

“Hyperscalers aren’t price-sensitive on HBM the way they are on commodity DRAM as it’s a critical bottleneck in their AI buildout and supply is genuinely constrained,” said Dave Mazza, chief executive officer at Roundhill Investments in New York. “I’d expect pricing to remain firm well into 2026 absent a material pullback in AI capex, which we’re not seeing.”

Shares of SK Hynix have climbed around 90% this year after more than tripling in 2025, outrunning Samsung, which is seeking to pull ahead in next-generation HBM4 arena. Samsung was first to commercially ship HBM4 chips and it showcased its cutting-edge HBM4E at Nvidia’s GTC event.

The memory makers’ stocks are still trading at a fraction of the valuation multiples of other top AI chip names including Nvidia and leading global foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., however. Skeptics say the lower valuation is merited due to the lumpy nature of memory earnings.

The bears’ argument follows big jumps in memory prices over past months that are squeezing manufacturers’ margins.

The benchmark contract price for 8 gigabits of DDR4 PC memory has risen for 11 consecutive months, hitting roughly $13 last month, according to market tracker DRAMeXchange. The steady uptrend has boosted margins across SK Hynix’s core business. Higher NAND flash prices also contributed.

And the average selling price of DRAM climbed 60.8% in the first quarter from the previous quarter, while that of NAND rose 55.3%, according to estimates by Mirae Asset Securities Co. Demand for enterprise solid-state drives has also surged alongside data center investment.

While pledging to expand capacity, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won cautioned in February that rapid technological shifts can lead to future losses. He also highlighted mounting infrastructure challenges and said the company is now exploring building power plants alongside AI data centers, warning that failure to meet energy demand could be “disastrous.”

Some investors also point to the rise of Chinese memory chipmakers as a potential threat to the dominant players.

“We are, in a way, in a new paradigm for memory,” Jorry Noeddekaer, a London-based fund manager at Polar Capital, said before the results. But “this idea that you will never ever see cyclicality in memory — we are not buying that.”

--With assistance from Edwin Chan, Youkyung Lee, Sangmi Cha, Mark Anderson and Shinhye Kang.

(Updates with market reaction and executive comments.)

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