AI MEMORY CHIPS 2028
Korea owns 90% of the $100 billion AI memory market.
Key figures
HBM market: $35 billion in 2025, toward $100 billion by 2028; Micron's entire 2026 supply is already booked.
My call: SK Hynix and Samsung control 90% or more of global HBM by 2028, from 79% in Q2 2025 and 83% in Q2 2026.
The threat: Micron holds 18% and is expanding, this call has a real opponent.
The bet on the table: Samsung and SK Hynix pledged 800 trillion won, $520 billion, for 4 new chip plants in June 2026, and SK Hynix beat Samsung on 2025 operating profit for the first time in history.
Everyone stares at Nvidia and TSMC like tourists at the Mona Lisa. Meanwhile the real money hangs in a quieter room: memory. HBM, the ultra-fast memory inside every AI system on the planet, is the bottleneck: Micron's 2026 supply is booked before the year started. The market: $35 billion in 2025, racing to $100 billion by 2028.
My call: SK Hynix and Samsung control 90% or more of global HBM by 2028. The receipts: SK Hynix beat Samsung on operating profit in 2025 for the first time in history, riding HBM, briefly overtook it as Korea's most valuable listed company in June 2026, and put 120 trillion won into the Yongin cluster through 2030, first fab 2027. That same month Samsung and SK Hynix pledged $520 billion for 4 new chip plants.
And because I grade my own homework in public: Korea sat at 79% in Q2 2025 and 83% in Q2 2026, SK Hynix 50%, Samsung 33%. Micron is the American in the ring holding 18% and swinging. My 90% means Micron loses the HBM4 round. That is the bet. Dated, public, no hiding.
Want to know who wins the AI hardware war? Ignore the logic chips everyone tweets about. Watch the memory. Korea already took the crown, quietly, while the analysts were writing Nvidia fan fiction.