Samsung is no longer the most valuable company in South Korea.

Thanks to the global AI chip craze, the market capitalization of a semiconductor company has reached $1.362 trillion, officially dethroning Samsung to become the most valuable company in South Korea.

SK Hynix shares closed 5.6% higher on Monday (June 22), raising its market capitalization to 2,080 trillion won, or $1.362 trillion.

Meanwhile, Samsung shares fell 0.1%, bringing its market capitalization down to 2,067 trillion won based on the number of outstanding shares.

The Kospi index rose 0.7% to close at a record high, bringing its year-to-date gains to 117%.

South Korea's stock index is outperforming other markets in the Asian region.

For comparison, Japan's Nikkei index has risen 44% and Taiwan's Taiex index has increased 65% since the beginning of the year.

The South Korean stock market has received a major boost this year from demand for AI-powered chips, amid ongoing global development of this technology infrastructure.

SK Hynix shares have more than quadrupled this year, making it the second South Korean company to surpass a market capitalization of $1 trillion, after Samsung.

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Samsung drops from number 1 in South Korea.TPO - SK Hynix has surpassed Samsung Electronics for the first time to become the most valuable listed company in South Korea. This achievement marks a spectacular transformation for the chip manufacturer, which was on the verge of bankruptcy more than 20 years ago, and reflects the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on the global semiconductor industry.

The two South Korean representatives are still trailing behind TSMC, the world's largest contract chip manufacturer and the first Asian company to reach the trillion-dollar mark.

SK Hynix, a major supplier of high-bandwidth memory products used in Nvidia's computing accelerators, reported a fivefold surge in quarterly net profit in April thanks to booming demand.

Samsung's booth at MWC 2025. Photo: Samsung

In recent years, memory manufacturers have prioritized the production of high-bandwidth memory as specialized components for artificial intelligence.

Training large language models often requires a close combination of Nvidia graphics processors with this type of memory.

Analysts from Bernstein believe that Samsung and SK Hynix's share prices still have room for growth, as the price of high-bandwidth memory is likely to continue rising to close the profit gap for suppliers.

This will lead to significant revenue adjustments. However, they also noted that higher prices will increase the cost burden for large-scale cloud computing companies.

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Bernstein raised its price target for Samsung shares from 225,000 won to 440,000 won and for SK Hynix shares from 1.15 million won to 3.3 million won.

(According to WSJ)

Human resources remain the biggest bottleneck for Da Nang's semiconductor development . Da Nang is accelerating the development of the semiconductor and artificial intelligence industries. However, the lack of high-quality human resources remains the biggest obstacle that needs to be addressed soon to realize the goal of becoming a technology hub.

Source: https://vietnamnet.vn/samsung-khong-con-gia-tri-nhat-han-quoc-2528279.html