SK Hynix approved $38 billion for two new chip plants, one for AI memory and one for NAND flash. The first cleanroom doesn't open until December 2028.

On August 7, SK Hynix's board approved 54.3 trillion won ($38.3B USD) to build two new chip plants inside Korea. It is the company's biggest domestic investment decision so far this year, and neither plant will make a finished chip for at least two more years.

Two fabs, two products

The bigger piece goes to Yongin, the semiconductor cluster southeast of Seoul. SK Hynix will spend 35.2 trillion won ($24.8B USD) on a second fab there, called Y2, covering about 1.13 million square meters. It is built for next generation DRAM and high bandwidth memory, the chip type that goes into AI accelerators. Construction starts in July 2027, and the first cleanroom is targeted for June 2029.

The rest, 19.1 trillion won ($13.5B USD), goes to a new fab in Cheongju called M17, covering about 680,000 square meters. It will produce NAND flash, the kind used in enterprise solid state drives for AI data centers. Construction there starts in February 2027, with the first cleanroom targeted for December 2028, about six months ahead of Y2.

SK Hynix explained the timing plainly in its own statement. "In the AI era, technological competitiveness alone is not enough," the company said. "The ability to supply customers with the products they need when they need them is itself a source of competitiveness."

A deadline moved up by 12 years

This is not a new plan. In June 2026, SK Hynix said it intended to spend 600 trillion won on the full Yongin cluster and 100 trillion won expanding Cheongju, without giving a construction schedule. Friday's board vote is the detail behind that announcement, for these two fabs specifically.

Yongin was originally supposed to have all four of its planned fabs finished by 2045. SK Hynix moved that date to 2033, twelve years earlier. A first Yongin fab, Y1, is already under construction, with its own first cleanroom targeted for February 2027, the same month M17 breaks ground in Cheongju.

What is already running

Cheongju is not a new site for SK Hynix. Three fabs there, M11, M12, and M15, are already operating. M17 will be a fourth. The company is betting that AI memory demand keeps growing through the rest of the decade and wants the ground broken now, rather than waiting for a slowdown to prove the demand was real.

A rough week for the stock, for unrelated reasons

Friday's approval landed in the middle of a bad stretch for SK Hynix shares. The stock fell 10.37% on Thursday during a broad Kospi selloff, then closed Friday at 1,432,000 won ($1,010 USD), down 4.22%.

The two are not connected. SanDisk beat its own quarter but gave weaker than expected guidance for the next one, and that hit memory stocks across the board on Thursday. Investors are separately worried that a planned Nasdaq listing for SK Hynix's NAND unit, Solidigm, will dilute the parent company's shares. Neither has anything to do with the new fabs.

SK Hynix has another announcement still pending. In the same regulatory filing, the company said it is "actively reviewing" additional shareholder return measures and expects to finalize and announce a plan in the third quarter, something it has promised without a number since early August.

Sources

• 한국경제, SK하이닉스, 용인·청주에 54조 투자 확정, on the board approval, the investment breakdown, and the construction timeline
• 한국일보, SK하이닉스 용인·청주에 54조 원 추가 투자..."AI 메모리 수요 대응", on the company's statement and the shareholder return filing
• Our earlier coverage: SK Hynix's cash target and the denied shareholder return report, Solidigm's possible Nasdaq listing, SK Hynix and Samsung's August 5 statements to Reuters

Figures are converted at approximately 1,417.83 won to the US dollar. This is general market commentary and not investment advice.