SK hynix posts record profit, maps out W40tr-plus spending

SK hynix reported the largest quarterly profit in its history on Wednesday and said it expects capital spending this year to reach the high 40 trillion won range, a figure that commits most of the quarter's earnings to building more capacity. Operating profit for the April-June period came to 60.54 trillion won ($41.9 billion), up 557.2 percent from a year earlier and 61 percent from the first quarter. Revenue rose 256.8 percent on-year to 79.32 trillion won. One quarter now exceeds what the com

2026-07-29 08:20:37:00

Altman eyes Korea as testbed for OpenAI’s first device

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told President Lee Jae Myung that the company hopes to use Korea as a testbed for its first hardware product, the presidential office said Tuesday. The two met in San Francisco on Friday to discuss expanding cooperation, including on next-generation AI devices. Senior presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said Altman "expressed expectations for using Korea as a testbed" for the device, which is due in the first quarter of next year, and signaled a willingness to broaden th

2026-07-28 14:09:01:00

Where CXMT’s IPO money is going: The DRAM gap Korea left

ChangXin Memory Technologies surged 472 percent at the opening of its Shanghai debut on Monday, briefly becoming China’s most valuable domestically listed company with a market capitalization of about 3.3 trillion yuan ($487 billion). But the line that matters most to Korea’s memory industry has been hiding in plain sight for months. In its listing prospectus, CXMT said it would deploy 29.5 billion yuan. Nearly 70 percent, or 20.5 billion yuan, goes to wafer lines and upgrading DRAM processes it

2026-07-27 14:41:30:00

Naver secures Nvidia’s $1b backing for AI factory push

Naver disclosed Monday that Nvidia will buy a 4.5 percent stake through a 1.48 trillion won ($1 billion) share sale, attaching binding terms to one part of the $10 billion AI infrastructure package the two companies unveiled with Canadian asset manager Brookfield in San Francisco last week. The filing sets the issuance at 7,241,564 new common shares priced at 204,500 won each, roughly 1.4 percent below Friday's close, with payment due Oct. 30. It is Naver's first third-party share allocation sin

2026-07-27 13:23:12:00

SK Chair Chey ordered to pay ex-wife W944b in divorce asset ruling

A Seoul appellate court on Friday ordered SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won to pay 944 billion won ($644 million) to his former wife, Roh Soh-yeong, cutting the earlier award by nearly a third while again ruling that his shares in the group's holding company belonged in the marital estate. The Seoul High Court's family division, presided over by Judge Lee Sang-joo, set Roh's recognized contribution at one-third and Chey's at two-thirds. That ratio applies to the pool of divisible assets. It does no

2026-07-24 15:39:45:00

Samsung supplies HBM4 as AMD’s Helios enters production

AMD has begun production of Helios, the AI server rack it is positioning against Nvidia's data center systems, with Samsung Electronics supplying the high-bandwidth memory inside it. AMD CEO Lisa Su announced the milestone Thursday at the company's Advancing AI conference held in Seoul. According to Su, shipments will begin late in the third quarter and expand in the fourth. Helios is sold as a complete cabinet rather than as individual chips. Each unit contains 72 Instinct MI455X accelerators t

2026-07-24 14:23:27:00

Samsung, LG Display pitch OLED for humanoid face

Samsung Display and LG Display each unveiled OLED panels designed for humanoid robot faces at K-Display 2026 in Seoul on Wednesday, marking an attempt to open a new application for screen technology already refined in smartphones and cars. Samsung Display placed a humanoid head at the front of its booth, fitted with a 6.9-inch curved OLED that displays expressions and status cues and tracks visitors' gaze with eye-tracking. The company also showed a 1.3-inch circular OLED built into a companion

2026-07-23 14:41:41:00

Samsung Electro-Mechanics books W750b in AI server orders

Samsung Electro-Mechanics said Thursday it has signed a supply contract worth about 300 billion won ($204 million) for multilayer ceramic capacitors used in artificial intelligence servers, its second such agreement in under a month. The buyer was described only as a large global company. Deliveries will run from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2027. That is the same window covered by a 450 billion won contract announced June 30 with an unnamed global tech firm, bringing disclosed MLCC orders for that singl

2026-07-23 14:25:47:00

Samsung, SK, Naver chiefs head to US for Nvidia talks

The heads of Samsung Electronics, SK Group and Naver are working to meet Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang near Silicon Valley this week, industry sources said Wednesday. The meeting is likely to take place Friday, with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Chairman Chey Tae-won and Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin in attendance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei may also join, though none of the companies has confirmed the meeting or its guest list. It would be the second such gather

2026-07-22 14:27:06:00

LG Display swings to first-half profit despite seasonal loss

LG Display reported an operating profit of 39 billion won ($26.4 million) on revenue of 11.15 trillion won for the first half of 2026, reversing an operating loss of 82.6 billion won a year earlier, the company said Wednesday. The 121.6 billion won improvement came without top-line growth. Revenue fell 4.3 percent from the same period last year, leaving an operating margin of 0.35 percent for the half. Almost all of that profit was earned in the first quarter. The second quarter produced an oper

2026-07-22 11:37:17:00