SK Hynix Overtakes Samsung as South Korea's No. 1 Stock

For the first time since November 2000, South Korea has a new most valuable company. Nikkei Asia reported on June 22 that SK Hynix passed Samsung Electronics in market capitalization during intraday trading, pushing its valuation to roughly 2 quadrillion won, or about $1.3 trillion, according to KED Global. Shares rose more than 5% on the day, the eighth consecutive winning session, as investors priced in what the financials had already been signaling: SK Hynix is now the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory for AI infrastructure.

As The Next Web noted, SK Hynix has spent two years as the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia's accelerators, commanding the majority of segment revenue in recent quarters. The AI training buildout has made that position enormously lucrative: in the first quarter of 2026, SK Hynix posted an operating profit of 37.61 trillion won ($25.4 billion) at a 72% operating margin, according to KED Global. The company has also said demand for its next-generation HBM4 chips is projected to exceed its own capacity for the next three years.

There are a couple of things the milestone headline doesn't fully capture. The market cap comparison is based on common shares only; when Samsung's preferred shares, worth roughly 180 trillion won, are included, Samsung remains larger in total value. And the profit story had already turned earlier: in January 2026, SK Hynix surpassed Samsung in annual profit for the first time, so this market cap crossing is more a culmination than a sudden reversal.

Two things stay unresolved: whether SK Hynix held the top spot at market close or only intraday, and Samsung's timeline for closing the HBM technology gap. Samsung has since unveiled zHBM and V10 BV-NAND to chase the AI memory lead, without publishing an HBM4 parity date. Analysts cited by KED Global noted that SK Hynix "may have further to run," but a 72% operating margin is historically exceptional, and its durability depends on sustained AI hardware demand and Nvidia's continued reliance on a single primary HBM partner.