To meet 'tremendous and humongous demand' from AI customers, SK Hynix accelerates 2027 fab plans by three months, with an even fresher fab beginning wafer production next month

We already knew SK Hynix had multiple new memory chip fabs in the works, but completion of any of them was still too far off to know if they'd have any tangible effect on the raging memory supply crisis. Well, the major memory maker has just announced its intentions to accelerate construction plans for one fab by three months, now aiming to finish up in February 2027. Furthermore, an already-existing fab is expected to start churning out wafers as soon as next month.

This follows news earlier this week that the South Korean memory manufacturer planned to invest a further 19 trillion won (or $12.90 billion) into another advanced chip packaging facility in Cheongju. The company announced in December that it planned "to invest approximately 30% of our sales in facilities in 2026 and accelerate the transition to 1c DRAM, but it will be difficult to resolve the supply shortage."

Expanding production was always part of the plan—but the AI industry's demand for memory has been scaling up faster than production can match. Sungsoo Ryu, CEO of SK Hynix America, told Reuters this week, "We have to support memory consumption for AI infrastructure."

To clarify, Ryu shared that the company would open only the first of a number of factories at its new chip facility in Yongin, South Korea, in February 2027. Once complete, the company's 600 trillion won (or $407 billion) 'Semiconductor Cluster' will eventually house a total of four fabs.

A key supplier to Nvidia, SK Hynix will also start deploying silicon wafers intended for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips (which are used for data centre GPUs) next month at another fab already established in Cheongju, called M15X.

So, yes, this latest news is great for hyperscaling, data centre customers, though less immediately helpful for your typical PC gaming consumer. Saying that, though, hopefully it will go some way towards increasing overall market supply and lowering prices across the board (or at least slow their seeming perpetual climb recently).

Ryu explains that many of SK Hynix's AI customers are also beginning to shift away from shorter term, one-year supply agreements in favour of multi-year contracts.

"We are seeing a lot of tremendous and humongous demand," Ryu said.

Fellow memory chip maker, Micron, has been keen to point out it's not its fault that demand is high and there simply isn't enough supply, though as a key memory supplier it surely bears some responsibility. As another of the big three DRAM makers, Samsung seems to be quite happy to keep that supply tight so it doesn't end up holding a ton of chips it can't sell if something happens to that demand.

"Rather than rapidly expanding facilities, we will pursue a strategy of maintaining long-term profitability," a Samsung rep said during an investor relations call last year, adding, "we will minimize the risk of oversupply through a capital expenditure (CAPEX) strategy that balances customer demand and pricing."

It's not necessarily so pretty for the memory module makers, however, with Patriot claiming to not be 'laughing their way to the bank' during this supply crisis. However, the actual IC manufacturers are a different matter entirely, with Reuters noting that SK Hynix's share price has increased by 280% over the last year. While that's a massive win for the company, consumers still don't have much reason to celebrate when faced with sky-high street prices.