SK Hynix warns 2027 will be "worst year ever" for memory shortage; forecasts crunch through 2030

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung forecast on the day of the company's record $26.5 billion Nasdaq IPO that global memory chip shortages will peak in 2027 and persist through the decade. "We forecast that next year will be the worst year in the industry's history from the supply perspective," Kwak told Reuters, noting that customer demand continues to exceed manufacturing capacity despite aggressive expansion. The Nasdaq debut raised the largest-ever ADR issuance by a foreign company in the U.S., with shares surging 14.25% on opening day.

The shortage is driven by massive AI demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which powers Nvidia GPU clusters and requires far more complex manufacturing than consumer DDR5. SK Hynix holds 51% of the global HBM market. The company is investing $4 billion to build an advanced packaging factory in Indiana and $10 billion to develop an AI solutions business in the U.S. South Korea's government is also backing SK Hynix and Samsung with 800 trillion won (~$518 billion) in combined investment to double domestic memory production within five years.

For architects evaluating data center buildouts and AI inference infrastructure, this signals multiyear HBM scarcity and likely sustained pricing power for SK Hynix and Micron. UBS expects global DRAM undersupply through at least Q2 2028. Long-term supply agreements between hyperscalers and manufacturers are proliferating as a result. The shift from training-focused GPU demand to inference-heavy workloads could reshape memory allocation patterns.