SK hynix said on August 19 that its board had approved a plan to repurchase and cancel KRW40 trillion (roughly US$29 billion) of its own shares, the largest share buyback and cancellation ever undertaken by a company listed in South Korea.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have amassed a combined KRW278 trillion (approx. US$196.9 billion) in cash equivalents and short-term financial instruments by the end of the second quarter of 2026 as AI-driven memory demand lifted prices, revenue, and profit. The surge has shifted attention from earnings growth to how South Korea's two largest memory chipmakers will deploy their expanding financial firepower.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly on track to complete development of 10-nanometer-class seventh-generation DRAM, also known as 1d DRAM, before SK hynix. According to The Bell, citing industry sources, Samsung is targeting September 2026 for completion, while SK hynix is aiming for December 2026, giving Samsung a lead of about one quarter.

SK hynix's second-largest customer generated KRW17.19 trillion (approx. US$12.4 billion) in sales in the first half of 2026, nearly matching the KRW17.61 trillion contributed by its largest customer. Yonhap News Agency identified the largest customer as Nvidia.

Samsung Electronics' semiconductor chief has told executives not to treat the company's HBM4 comeback as proof that its recovery is complete, according to Seoul Economic Daily. The caution comes as the memory industry shifts to a generation that will be harder to manufacture at scale.

Samsung Electronics' consolidated sales in China surged 272% in the first half of 2026, far outpacing growth in the Americas, against the backdrop of a sharp recovery in its semiconductor business. Nvidia, meanwhile, was not among Samsung's five major customers.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly considering repurposing the second line at its next-generation semiconductor R&D complex in Giheung into a foundry send-fab, a shift that would add advanced-node capacity as demand for AI memory strains leading-edge capacity.

High-bandwidth memory (HBM), a core component in AI semiconductors, has drawn fresh scrutiny after former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger called it "lousy" at a recent AI summit in Paris. SK Hynix, the market leader in this type of memory, also said it is not the final answer to AI memory bottlenecks, underscoring the industry's push to find a next-generation memory architecture beyond HBM.

South Korea's semiconductor export boom was heavily concentrated in memory in July. Memory-chip export value surged 276.9% year over year, while system semiconductor exports slipped 0.7%, as server demand and higher memory prices created a sharp split between the two segments.

SanDisk Corp used its August 13, 2026 investor day to detail a technology roadmap and a set of financial targets it says will carry the flash-memory maker through the end of the decade. The plans center on new multiyear supply contracts with data center customers and an accelerating NAND product cadence built around artificial intelligence inference workloads.