SK Hynix shares rose 3.5% to $181 in Thursday premarket trading after Reuters reported that the South Korean memory-chip maker was in early talks with Intel about manufacturing memory chips in the United States for the first time. The companies are considering leasing part of Intel's delayed Ohio complex or creating a joint venture with Intel and major cloud-computing firms to secure supplies of increasingly scarce memory. Neither company confirmed an agreement. SK Hynix said it was exploring options to strengthen global competitiveness, while Intel called the report speculation and reaffirmed its commitment to the Ohio site. The proposed arrangement could give Intel Foundry, Intel's contract-chip manufacturing division, a customer for idle capacity. SK Hynix already leads in high-bandwidth memory (stacked chips used with AI processors), with revenue up 145% and net income up 461% over the past 12 months. The company is also building a $4 billion Indiana facility for memory assembly, though advanced fabrication in the United States would cost more and may require review in South Korea because the technology can be classified as national core technology. Micron Technology, the only large memory maker headquartered in the United States, faces a narrower domestic advantage if SK Hynix begins U.S. fabrication. Memory stocks rose despite the Federal Reserve's first interest-rate increase since 2023 and its signal that rates would not be cut through 2027, as memory pricing and AI spending continued to outweigh higher-rate pressure on long-term profits.