Unlike traditional single-story manufacturing plants, the first "fab," or semiconductor fabrication plant, will reach the height of a 50-story building to accommodate six stacked cleanrooms—controlled environments for chip making—within a mountainous landscape.
This massive capital expenditure, which involves funds from a record-breaking $26.5 billion Nasdaq listing, aims to secure a dominant position in the market for high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
HBM consists of specialized stacks of memory chips essential for artificial intelligence infrastructure, as they allow processors to access data rapidly.
The expansion is critical because extreme demand from AI companies has caused supply shortages and soaring prices, leading major technology firms like Nvidia to move away from short-term purchases in favor of multi-year supply agreements and co-development deals.
The Yongin cluster is designed to transition the industry toward custom HBM, where memory is co-designed with specific AI processors to increase efficiency.
SK Hynix currently leads this sector with a 58% market share, but faces intensifying competition from Samsung, Micron, and emerging Chinese manufacturers.
While the company is also building a $4 billion packaging facility in Indiana to stack and wire chips, its primary manufacturing capacity remains concentrated in South Korea due to the specialized infrastructure required for leading-edge production.