SK Hynix stock closed 7.7% lower on Monday as robust U.S. jobs data fueled bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike
Credit: Nvidia
Nvidia $NVDA and SK Hynix announced a multi-year technology partnership Monday to develop next-generation memory chips for AI data centers and accelerate semiconductor design and manufacturing — even as South Korean chip stocks posted steep losses on the same day.
The agreement covers memory supply for Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI supercomputers, Vera CPUs, RTX Spark-powered PCs, and Jetson Thor robotic computing platforms, the company said. The two firms will also apply AI to chip design and manufacturing, using Nvidia's CUDA-X $TWTR libraries and PhysicsNeMo framework to speed up semiconductor simulations, and will develop factory digital twins aimed at autonomous fab operations.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who arrived in South Korea on Friday, described SK Hynix as Nvidia's largest memory partner and said the arrangement would persist. "We already procure and we buy from SK Hynix already billions and billions of dollars each year, and it's going to grow substantially," Huang told reporters, according to Reuters. He said the deal runs more than two years with the option to keep extending.
Huang also confirmed that Nvidia's new Vera CPU — the company's first standalone data center microprocessor — will use SK Hynix's DRAM, according to Bloomberg.
Despite the partnership news, SK Hynix stock ended Monday's session 7.7% lower in Korean trading, having fallen as much as 10.3% intraday. Samsung Electronics finished the session down 10.2%. A broad rout in global technology stocks sent the Kospi down 8.3%, after better-than-expected U.S. employment figures stoked fears that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates. Asked about the selloff, Huang expressed little concern, quipping that cheaper share prices gave investors a buying opportunity and adding that AI's long-term outlook remains strong.
The SK Hynix agreement was one of several deals Huang announced during his South Korea visit. As part of the broader slate of announcements, SK Telecom revealed plans to deploy gigawatt-scale AI cloud infrastructure powered by Nvidia, targeting a 2027 launch for its first data center, according to The Wall Street Journal. Naver, the South Korean internet giant, signed on as well, reaching an agreement with Nvidia that includes a shared roadmap for expanding into AI markets across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.
The day's events mark a sharp reversal for South Korean chip stocks, which had been among the world's strongest performers. The session's losses came after a remarkable run for the sector: SK Hynix had recently crossed a $1 trillion market capitalization for the first time on the back of voracious appetite for high-bandwidth memory in AI infrastructure, and the Kospi had roughly doubled over six months as both SK Hynix and Samsung rode the AI wave.
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