SK Hynix broke ground on a more than $4 billion advanced packaging facility at Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana, on August 27. The company calls the site the United States' first dedicated high-bandwidth memory production hub. The plant will not fabricate memory wafers; instead, it will stack, interconnect and test DRAM dies made in Icheon and Yongin, South Korea, producing finished HBM modules for US AI accelerator customers. The cleanroom is targeted to open by October 2028, with volume production of next-generation HBM4E scheduled for the third quarter of 2029. CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said the global memory shortage will persist through at least the end of 2030, with any later easing likely to be gradual rather than a sharp cyclical downturn. SK Hynix held 58% of global HBM revenue in the first quarter of 2026, compared with approximately 21% each for Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology, and said its DRAM, NAND and HBM capacity is fully committed through 2026. The Indiana project will reduce shipping and geopolitical exposure for US customers, but it will not eliminate dependence on South Korean wafer production. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is pressing SK Hynix and Samsung to build front-end memory fabs in the United States, while SK Hynix is scouting potential sites. The project is supported by up to $458 million in CHIPS Act grants and $500 million in loans, is expected to sustain roughly 7,000 regional jobs, and will include a research and development testbed and a Purdue University partnership.