SK Hynix has overtaken Samsung Electronics to become South Korea's most valuable company, a milestone driven by HBM (high-bandwidth memory) demand from AI infrastructure buildout. This shift signals a structural rerating of HBM-pure-plays versus diversified legacy memory incumbents and sets up a relative-value question within the memory space.
Hynix's HBM3E effectively controls the critical supply chain for top AI accelerators, with Nvidia dependency giving it pricing power and a multiyear demand runway that is structurally absent for Samsung's current memory mix.
Samsung trades at a steep discount to Hynix and its own historical multiples, and a successful HBM re-qualification at Nvidia — which management has guided for — could rapidly close the valuation gap and reverse the pair.