SK Hynix Shares Surge On Microsoft’s Exclusive HBM Supply Deal
In Focus
- SK Hynix stock rose 8.7% at the Korea Stock Exchange
- The South Korean company plans to set up a new advanced packaging fab
- Microsoft’s Maia AI chip o is designed for AI inferencing
SK Hynix shares hit a record high on news that the company is the sole supplier of advanced memory for Microsoft’s new AI chip, Maia 200. According to Yahoo Finance, the stock traded 8.7% higher on January 26, 2026, at the Korea Stock Exchange. The surge erased a previous loss that was triggered by tariff threats from the U.S.
SK Hynix’s HBM Leadership
SK Hynix’s HBM chip leadership became apparent last year when it shifted to mass production of its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, HBM4. The South Korean company is now the sole supplier of advanced memory for Microsoft.
Earlier this month, SK Hynix announced plans to invest in an advanced packaging fab, which is critical for production of AI memory products like High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).
The chip maker’s stock has been on an upward trend since the beginning of this year, extending the AI-driven rally that has pushed the company’s valuation past $400 billion.
Over the last three years, shares of the company have soared 10x. This surge has been driven by investor enthusiasm for AI, particularly due to the SK Hynix NVIDIA chip supply deal.
Shift in the Memory Market Favors SK Hynix
SK Hynix’s stock rise is expected to boost its outlook on January 29, 2026, when it releases its results. Growing demand for DRAM and improvement in chip pricing are expected to affect the company’s quarterly outlook.
“The memory market is shifting toward semi-customization, with memory customers required to sign a contract a year prior to actual product delivery. In 2026, we foresee global DRAM/NAND pricing growth to be significantly better than expected,” Analyst Peter Lee stated, as cited by Yahoo Finance.
Based on these developments, SK Hynix is set to report a revenue surge in the fourth-quarter.
The stock gain was also enhanced by growing HBM earnings expectations, while Citigroup raised its price projection for SK Hynix by 56%. SK Hynix will be competing with Samsung in HBM4 production. Samsung recently reported that customers had approved its memory chips, indicating that the company had regained technological leadership.
Microsoft’s Latest Chip Focuses on AI Inferencing
The SK Hynix-Microsoft supply deal came as the Windows maker unveiled the Maia AI chip on January 26, 2026. The chip is designed for fast AI inferencing and is capable of reducing the cost of running large language models at scale.
“Maia 200 is part of our heterogeneous AI infrastructure and will serve multiple models, including the latest GPT-5.2 models from OpenAI, bringing performance per dollar advantage to Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft 365 Copilot. The Microsoft Superintelligence team will use Maia 200 for synthetic data generation and reinforcement learning to improve next-generation in-house models,” Microsoft stated in a statement published on its website.
Each Maia 200 chip will require six units of HBM3E manufactured by SK Hynix. Maia 200 is being deployed in Microsoft’s Azure cloud data centers in the U.S. The Windows maker said the new chip will power the latest AI models, like GPT 5.2.
