Shares of South Korean chip heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix surged Thursday, a day after the two companies partnered with artificial intelligence major OpenAI as part of the U.S. firm’s Stargate initiative.
Shares of Samsung hit their highest levels since January 2021, rising over 4%, while SK Hynix stock surged more than 9% to reach its highest since 2000.
OpenAI said in a statement that this partnership will “focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and expanding data center capacity in Korea.” The ChatGPT-maker added that the two chipmakers plan to scale up production of advanced memory chips, which are critical to powering its AI models.
The announcement came as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Seoul, along with top leaders from Samsung and SK Hynix.
Earlier this month, SK Hynix announced that it was ready to mass-produce its next-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, cementing its leading position in the AI value chain. HBM is a type of memory used in chipsets for artificial intelligence computing, including those from global AI giant Nvidia, a major client of SK Hynix.
HBM4 chips are expected to be the primary AI memory chips needed for Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin architecture—a more powerful AI chip designed for global data centers.
SK Hynix has been a main chip supplier to Nvidia, while rival Samsung has reportedly been working to get its HBM4 chips certified by Nvidia.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/02/sk-hynix-samsung-shares-openai-stargate-korea.html