Kwak No-jung, CEO of SK Hynix, said on the 27th, "This year's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) volume has been sold out, and next year's volume will also be finalized with customers within the first half of this year." At the 77th regular shareholders' meeting held at SK Hynix's headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, President Kwak said, "We are increasing sales visibility by consulting with customers in advance as high investment costs and long production periods are required due to the nature of HBM products."

SK Hynix is currently supplying its HBM3E (5th generation) 12-layer products to major customers including Nvidia. Recently, it has provided the world's first HBM4 (6th generation) 12-step sample to major customers and plans to mass-produce it in the second half of the year. It is expected that next year's supplies will be sold out in the first half of this year, and a significant portion of HBM4 12-layer products as well as HBM3E 12-layer products are expected to be included.

Regarding the outlook for the artificial intelligence (AI) memory market this year, President Kwak said, "Although there is high uncertainty, big technologies are expanding their infrastructure investments to secure the leadership in the AI market," adding, "HBM demand is expected to explode due to the increase in graphics processing units (GPUs) and customized chips (ASICs)."

"We expect the HBM market to grow about nine times this year compared to 2023," he said. "The demand for solid-state drives (SSD) for high-capacity enterprises, which are needed for AI learning and reasoning, will also grow 3.5 times."

[Reporter Park Seungjoo]