A SK Hynix flag (R) and a South Korean national flag (L) flutter outside the company’s Bundang office in Seongnam on Jan. 26, 2024.
Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images
SK Hynix beat rival Samsung Electronics in operating profit for the first time in 2025, as it retained its lead in high-bandwidth memory used in artificial intelligence chips.
The two South Korean memory makers went head-to-head this week, with SK Hynix reporting earnings on Wednesday and Samsung on Thursday morning local time.
SK Hynix posted a record operating profit of 47.2 trillion won for the full year, surpassing Samsung’s 43.6 trillion won. The comparison underscores SK Hynix’s ascension in South Korea’s tech space since it was acquired by SK Telecom for about $3 billion in 2012.
SK Hynix focuses almost entirely on memory chips, while Samsung operates across multiple businesses, including consumer electronics and contract chip manufacturing. Samsung’s memory segment generated operating profits of about 24.9 trillion won in 2025.
SK Hynix’s success is in large part thanks to its entrenched position as the global leader in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, a specialized chip used in AI processors and servers such as those produced by Nvidia.
“SK Hynix is clearly an outstanding ‘AI Winner’ in Asia,” said MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, adding that its lead in quality and supply of HBMs and other chips used in AI servers has been crucial in the current phase of the AI infrastructure boom.
SK Hynix has maintained its market lead in both areas, even as Samsung regained the top spot in memory revenue rankings in the fourth quarter of 2025, said Hwang.
However, competition is ramping up.
While SK Hynix managed to gain an early lead in HBM and secured the lion’s share of Nvidia memory contracts last year, competitors like Samsung and Micron have been making some breakthroughs.
Samsung has expanded its HBM sales and said it remains on track to begin delivering HBM4 products — the latest, sixth-generation HBM technology — this year.
“[W]e expect Samsung to show a significant turnaround with HBM4 for Nvidia’s new products, moving past last year’s quality issues,” said Ray Wang, an analyst at SemiAnalysis focused on memory and the AI supply chain.
Still, analysts expect SK Hynix to retain high market share in HBM4 and maintain its dominant position.
“The HBM4 race is really between SK Hynix and Samsung as we think [the] two companies are more competitive than Micron,” said Wang.
“We expect SK Hynix to maintain its lead in HBM4, while Samsung to make material progress and become more competitive in HBM4 than [previous generations],” he added.
