SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said during the company’s Nasdaq debut on July 10 that he sees no meaningful signs of a slowdown in the memory semiconductor market. Instead, he expects the supply crunch to intensify, with 2027 potentially becoming "the worst year in the industry’s history from the supply perspective" and shortages lasting beyond 2030. AI workloads are consuming memory capacity faster than manufacturers can expand production. SK Hynix reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of 79.32 trillion won, up 257% from a year earlier, while operating profit rose 557% to 60.54 trillion won, representing an operating margin of about 76%. The company expects DRAM demand to grow in the mid-20% range in 2026 and NAND demand in the high-10% range. It has signed long-term supply agreements involving deposits and firm commitments with approximately 10 major customers, a shift from the memory industry’s traditional reliance on spot prices and short-term contracts. SK Hynix holds more than 50% of the high-bandwidth memory market, or HBM (high-speed memory for AI processors), which has become a bottleneck in data-center infrastructure. Nevertheless, its shares fell more than 15% shortly after the Nasdaq listing amid profit-taking and concerns that the memory cycle may be nearing a peak. Samsung and Micron remain its primary broader-market competitors; both are advancing in HBM, but SK Hynix’s first-mover advantage and manufacturing-yield leadership have remained durable so far.