SK Hynix has already sold more than half of the memory it plans to build in 2027 and 2028. On Wednesday the company reported record revenue for the third quarter of 2026 and said the imbalance behind those contracts will not go away soon. It expects demand to exceed supply at least until 2030.
That matters for anyone buying memory. Capacity locked in long-term agreements does not reach the open market. The shelf of RAM and SSDs left for ordinary buyers gets smaller while the queue of large customers gets longer.
Record revenue and 14 locked customers
Quarterly revenue reached a record 104.6 trillion won, about $78 billion. That is 32 percent up on the previous quarter and 328 percent up on the same quarter last year. SK Hynix also reported a record operating profit.
The company said it has signed 14 long-term agreements with 14 large customers. Those deals together cover more than half of its output for 2027 and 2028, and some of the buyers have asked to extend them. This is not a discount club. The Register notes that the deals include “a mechanism that reflects market conditions within a price range agreed upon with customers”, so the buyers lock volume but still pay close to the going rate.
Why the shortage runs to 2030
SK Hynix said supply “is not keeping pace with the growth of the market”. Citing the “technical difficulty of leading-edge processes” and “the long lead time required to build new production facilities”, the company expects “the structure in which demand exceeds supply” to persist. Managers admitted that new fabs cannot be built as fast as demand grows.
The demand side is also getting wider. The report points to “general enterprises” and to countries building their own AI infrastructure, plus future demand from autonomous driving. It describes a “virtuous cycle” where AI productivity gains and new revenue in software, customer service and search pay for more AI buildout, which needs more memory.
The company is expanding, and Wccftech lists what is coming:
- The M15X fab running up to maximum capacity, with a rising share of sixth-generation 10nm-class DRAM.
- HBM4 output increasing sharply this year, with SK Hynix expecting HBM4 to pass HBM3E in both volume and revenue in Q4.
- NAND shifting to the 321-layer process for more than half of its domestic capacity in Q4 2026, plus high bandwidth flash aimed at AI throughput.
- Yongin phase 1 in full operation next year, which pushes investment further up.
All of that is real capacity. It is simply late, and the 14 customers already signed stand first in line for it.
What it means for RAM and SSD prices
CFO Kim Woo-hyun put the consumer side bluntly. He said “shipment volumes for PCs and mobile devices are expected to decrease due to cost burdens from rising memory prices and supply shortages.” Memory is a heavy share of a laptop or phone bill of materials, and vendors cannot absorb that quietly. Falling shipment volumes is the polite way of saying fewer machines at old prices.
Gadget Nuggets has followed the same shortage from the price side, when data centers booked 2027 supply years ahead of the rest of the market. Nothing in SK Hynix’s own outlook points to relief before the end of the decade.
Sources: The Register, Wccftech
Leave a comment