SK Hynix (NASDAQ: SKHY) is putting a historic amount of money into new capacity. On Aug. 7, the memory maker's board signed off on 54.3 trillion won of spending -- about $38 billion -- split across two new plants. Some 35.2 trillion won goes to the Y2 fab in Yongin, which will make high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and next-generation DRAM.
The remaining 19.1 trillion won funds the M17 facility in Cheongju, which will make NAND flash memory. The timelines are the striking part. M17's groundbreaking comes in February 2027, and its first cleanroom doesn't open until December 2028.
Y2 waits until July 2027 to break ground, with its first cleanroom opening in June 2029. And a cleanroom opening comes before the equipment goes in, let alone volume shipments. The soonest either plant opens its first cleanroom is nearly two and a half years away.
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Continue » For a memory market where prices have been surging on short supply, the gap between approving capacity and producing from it may be the most important number in the announcement. The projects serve different halves of the memory market, and they run on different schedules. M17, the NAND plant, is the nearer one, with construction starting in early 2027 and the investment running through April 2031.
Y2 is the bigger commitment at 35.2 trillion won, and the later one, with spending planned through October 2031. It's aimed at HBM and next-generation DRAM -- the chips feeding artificial intelligence (AI) processors, and the products behind the company's record second quarter. So M17's first cleanroom opens about six months ahead of Y2's.
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