South Korea's two largest chipmakers — Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — announced Monday they will invest roughly 800 trillion won ($518 billion) to build four new fabrication plants in the country's southwest, driven by surging demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI training. SK Hynix, which has become the dominant HBM supplier, surpassed Samsung this month to become South Korea's most valuable listed company for the first time in 25 years.
A presidential adviser said AI demand could push completion to 2034 or 2035, over a decade earlier than the original 2044 target. Separately, SK Hynix last week announced a roughly $29 billion U.S. stock listing — among the largest ever — to fund further expansion.
AI vs. Crypto: Zero-Sum Battle for Capital
CF Benchmarks' Gabe Selby told investors that much of the new money and attention has flowed into AI plays, leaving crypto fighting for a smaller share of overall risk appetite. The rotation has shown up in places that used to feed crypto directly. When gold, silver and Bitcoin sold off together recently as a hedge trade unwound, the cash leaving those hard assets moved into AI stocks rather than into Bitcoin.
Even Bitcoin miners have been redirecting computing capacity toward AI hosting, where contracted payments beat the swings of mining revenue.
South Korea's $518 billion commitment represents a decade-long structural bet, not a passing boom. Crypto has spent the year on the other side of that flow. The open question: will capital chasing chips and AI listings eventually circle back, or stay put?