SK Hynix’s profit surged 632%! Memory has suddenly become a hot commodity, but can ordinary consumers really celebrate?

If the biggest concerns when buying a computer used to be whether the CPU was fast enough and the graphics card powerful enough, in the AI era, memory is being revalued.
SK Hynix’s revenue reached 104.62 trillion won in the third quarter of 2026, while operating profit hit 83.33 trillion won, bringing its operating margin to 80%. In other words, for every 100 won in revenue, about 80 won was operating profit. That kind of profitability is remarkable in manufacturing.
The key driver is strong demand for products such as high-bandwidth HBM and server DDR5 memory. Large AI models need to access vast amounts of data quickly, and ordinary memory cannot meet the needs of every high-end application, so higher-performance products are naturally more sought after.
Chipmakers are therefore racing to expand production, while cloud computing giants scramble to secure supplies. The industry seems to have entered a contest where “whoever gets the memory first gets ahead.”
Still, don’t rush to assume that prices for all memory products will keep rising. High-end HBM and ordinary consumer memory are not the same market; product mix, supply and demand, and inventory levels all affect prices.
For ordinary consumers, the AI industry making a fortune doesn’t mean they’ll get the same benefits when buying a computer.
It’s like a restaurant making big money from a boom in high-end ingredients— that doesn’t mean every dish on the menu will become more expensive.
What’s really worth watching is how long this wave of AI demand will last, and whether high profits can withstand future capacity expansion and competition. The chip market may be hot, but our judgment shouldn’t be driven by the temperature. $SKHYV

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