SEOUL (Reuters) – SK Hynix (000660.KS, HXSCL) shares rose more than 9% on Thursday after the South Korean company started mass production of the most advanced high-bandwidth memory chips, moving ahead in a race to meet demand from an artificial intelligence boom.
Seoul-listed shares of the world’s second-largest memory chip maker outperformed larger rival Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), whose stock rose 4%. Shares were also boosted by the bullish outlook for AI demand from Micron (IN) overnight.
SK Hynix said in a statement that it was the world’s first latest-generation HBM product, called HBM3E, with 12 layers and 50% more capacity than the previous eight-layer chips.
SK Hynix, which has been the main supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia (NVDA), said it plans to deliver the latest products to unidentified customers by the end of this year.
Competition is intensifying to supply HBM chips, which help process large amounts of data to train AI technology and are critical to Nvidia’s graphics processors.
Samsung Electronics said in July that it plans to ship its production-ready HBM3E 12-high devices to customers in the second half of this year.
Micron said earlier this month that it was shipping production-capable HBM3E 12-high devices to key industry partners for qualification.
The South Korean stock index rose by 1.7 percent.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Ed Davies)