SK Hynix just delivered the kind of earnings beat that makes Nvidia investors very happy. The South Korean memory giant posted record quarterly revenue of $17.13 billion and operating profit that jumped 62% year-over-year, all fueled by insatiable demand for the high-bandwidth memory chips that power AI datacenters. It's another data point proving the AI infrastructure gold rush is very real and very profitable.
SK Hynix just proved that being Nvidia's closest memory partner pays off in spectacular fashion. The South Korean chipmaker shattered records Wednesday with third-quarter revenue hitting 24.45 trillion won ($17.13 billion) and operating profit surging 62% year-over-year to 11.38 trillion won.
The numbers tell the story of an industry in overdrive. Revenue jumped 39% compared to last year's third quarter, while quarter-over-quarter growth of 10% shows momentum isn't slowing down. "As demand across the memory segment has soared due to customers' expanding investments in AI infrastructure, SK Hynix once again surpassed the record-high performance of the previous quarter," the company said in its earnings release.
The secret sauce? High-bandwidth memory, or HBM - the specialized chips that act as the high-speed pipeline between processors and data in AI datacenters. While SK Hynix makes regular memory for everything from smartphones to laptops, it's the HBM business that's driving these record-breaking results. Think of HBM as the premium gasoline for AI engines - more expensive, higher performance, and absolutely essential for the kind of massive language models that companies are racing to deploy.
Nvidia has been SK Hynix's biggest customer for these chips, and that relationship is paying dividends as the AI boom accelerates. But the competitive landscape is shifting fast. Samsung recently passed Nvidia's qualification tests for advanced HBM products, according to local reports, while Micron has already started supplying Nvidia with its own HBM technology.
"With the innovation of AI technology, the memory market has shifted to a new paradigm," SK Hynix CFO Kim Woohyun told investors. The company isn't just riding the wave - it's helping create it. SK Hynix currently holds a commanding 64% share of the global HBM market, which exploded 178% year-over-year in the second quarter alone, according to Counterpoint Research.
