SK Hynix: The Memory Chip Crunch Runs to 2030, and 2027 Could Be the Worst Yet

SK Hynix isn't betting on relief. The South Korean memory giant says the chip shortage squeezing AI hardware will drag on through 2030 — and it told investors as much on October 28, 2026, alongside a record quarter, according to Crypto Briefing.

That quarter was a monster. Revenue hit 104.6155 trillion won, the first time SK Hynix has ever blown past the 100 trillion won line in a single three-month stretch. The fuel: high-bandwidth memory, server DRAM and enterprise SSDs — the parts AI data centers can't run without.

Why so long? Two structural walls. Cutting-edge manufacturing has gotten brutally hard, and standing up new fabs takes years, not months. CEO Kwak Noh-jung flagged 2027 as the likely peak of the squeeze, calling it potentially the worst year in memory supply history because of ongoing shortages.

Customers are already jockeying for position. Long-term agreements with 14 buyers, including major cloud providers, cover more than half of SK Hynix's expected output for 2027 and 2028. Translation: the giants with the scale to sign multi-year deals are locking in supply before anyone else.

The company is also flipping its lineup toward newer, pricier AI memory. It projects HBM4 will pass HBM3E in both revenue and volume by the end of the fourth quarter of 2026. Meanwhile the M15X fab should hit full capacity by year-end, and new plants are planned in South Korea and the US.

Three things to watch from here: whether HBM4 really overtakes HBM3E by the Q4 2026 deadline, whether M15X fills up on schedule, and how fast those new fabs come online. SK Hynix shares this battlefield with Samsung and Micron — and right now, it's the one holding the contracts.