South Korea’s SK Hynix Just Crossed $1 Trillion. Biden’s Final CHIPS Act Award Gave Them $458 Million of American Taxpayer Money.
Their Indiana Factory Won’t Produce a Single Chip Until 2028. Trump Called the Whole Program “A Tremendous Waste of Money.”
South Korea’s SK Hynix crossed $1 trillion in stock market capitalization on May 27, 2026 — becoming one of only four non-U.S. companies ever to reach that threshold. Shares surged 9.3% to close at approximately $1.10 trillion in market cap. The driver is a single product: High Bandwidth Memory (HBM3E), the stacked DRAM chips that power every Nvidia H100, H200, and B200 AI GPU on Earth. SK Hynix holds approximately 57–62% of the global HBM market. Nvidia is estimated to have driven 27% of SK Hynix’s total revenue in the first half of 2025 alone.
On December 19, 2024 — three weeks before the Biden administration ended — Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (D)announced a CHIPS Act incentives award to SK Hynix worth up to $958 million total: $458 million in direct grants and $500 million in federal loans. The money funds a memory packaging plant at Purdue University Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana — with mass production not expected until the second half of 2028. That is 1.5 years into Donald Trump’s second term. Trump, at his joint address to Congress in March 2025, called the entire CHIPS Act “a tremendous waste of money” and urged Congress to repeal it.
- $1.10TSK Hynix market cap — May 27, 2026SK Hynix (KRX: 000660) crossed $1 trillion in market capitalization on May 27, 2026 — up from $81.7B in 2024. That is a +1,240% increase in 16 months. The milestone makes SK Hynix one of only four non-U.S. $1 trillion companies globally, alongside Samsung Electronics, TSMC, and Saudi Aramco. Micron crossed the same threshold the same day.
- 72%Q1 2026 operating margin — surpassing Nvidia's 65%SK Hynix Q1 2026: 52.58 trillion won revenue (+198% YoY), 37.61 trillion won operating profit (+405% YoY), 72% operating margin — surpassing even Nvidia's 65% operating margin for the quarter. Net profit: 40.35 trillion won. Net margin: 77%. Cash: 54.3 trillion won.
- $458MBiden CHIPS Act direct grant to SK Hynix — December 19, 2024One of the final major CHIPS Act awards of the Biden administration. $458 million direct grant + $500 million federal loans = $958 million total. Funds a high-bandwidth memory packaging plant at Purdue University Research Park, West Lafayette, Indiana. SK Hynix committed $3.87 billion in total investment. Mass production target: second half of 2028.
- 2028When Biden's CHIPS Act grant produces its first chipThe Indiana plant funded by Biden's $458M CHIPS Act grant to SK Hynix will not produce a chip until the second half of 2028 — 1.5 years into Trump's second term. Trump called the CHIPS Act 'a tremendous waste of money' and urged Congress to repeal it (March 2025 joint address). Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) — whose state hosts the SK Hynix facility — publicly pushed back: 'one of the greatest successes of our time.'
- ~$150BChina's state semiconductor investment — 3x the entire CHIPS ActChina's state-led semiconductor investment exceeds $150 billion — approximately three times the size of the entire U.S. CHIPS Act. Beijing's goal: eliminate dependence on U.S.-designed chips by 2035. The U.S. CHIPS Act invested ~$39 billion in direct subsidies. Meanwhile, SK Hynix's HBM4 — the next-generation AI memory for Nvidia's 'Vera Rubin' platform — is expected to be led by SK Hynix and Samsung; Micron was excluded due to failing technical requirements.
High Bandwidth Memory stacks multiple DRAM chips vertically — like a skyscraper — and places them directly next to the GPU die in the same chip package. Data moves between processor and memory at speeds conventional DRAM cannot achieve. The bottleneck for training and running large AI models is almost never raw compute — it is memory bandwidth. HBM solves this.
H100 (HBM3): 80 GB capacity · 3.35 TB/s bandwidth
H200 (HBM3e): 141 GB capacity · 4.8 TB/s bandwidth
B200 (HBM3e): 192 GB capacity · 8.0 TB/s bandwidth
Market: Only three companies produce HBM: SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron. SK Hynix invented and commercialized HBM in partnership with AMD in 2013. HBM market size: $35B in 2025; projected $54.6B in 2026 (Bank of America); ~$100B by 2028.
SK Hynix market share (Counterpoint Research, Q3 2025): 57% of HBM revenue — down from 62% in Q2 as Samsung recovered and Micron gained. SK Hynix secured ~70% of Nvidia’s HBM4 Vera Rubin allocation for next-gen GPUs.
“By investing in companies like SK hynix and communities like West Lafayette, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act continues to supercharge America's global technology leadership.”
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (D) · December 19, 2024 — final CHIPS Act announcement
Raimondo’s announcement was made 32 days before Biden left office. The award was celebrated as proof that the CHIPS Act was bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to American soil. What it actually funded was a memory packaging plant — not a chip fabrication facility — for a South Korean company, which will not produce its first chip until 2028, and which crossed a $1 trillion market valuation in May 2026 using its Korean fabrication capacity, not the funded Indiana plant.
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) — whose state benefits directly from the Purdue facility — publicly defended the CHIPS Act after Trump called it a “waste of money,” calling it “one of the greatest successes of our time.” The debate between Republicans about the CHIPS Act is the most visible fault line in this story: it is not a clean party-line vote, but the Biden administration that created the $458M award and structured it to fund a plant that produces nothing before Trump’s term would end.
SK Hynix crosses $1 trillion market cap threshold on May 27, 2026 — driven by AI memory demand and sold-out HBM3E capacity through 2027. SK Hynix is now the 12th most valuable company in the world by market cap.
BREAKING: SK Hynix shares surge as company crosses 1 trillion US dollar market cap — first South Korean chip company to reach the milestone. Driven entirely by HBM3E demand from Nvidia and hyperscalers. Q1 2026 operating margin: 72%.
“We just wanna protect our businesses and our people and they will come because they won't have to pay tariffs if they build in America.”
President Donald Trump (R) · Joint address to Congress · March 2025 — on tariffs as alternative to CHIPS Act subsidies
“The CHIPS Act is a tremendous waste of money. These companies would come without it.”
President Donald Trump (R) · Joint address to Congress · March 2025 — confirmed by Reuters, Washington Times, Manufacturing Dive. Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) publicly pushed back: 'one of the greatest successes of our time.'