South Korea has launched a 900 trillion won, or $584 billion, initiative to expand its chip manufacturing capacity.
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix will spearhead the effort, each planning to construct two new fabrication plants. Unlike the current manufacturing base concentrated near Seoul, these facilities are slated for the southwestern region. Samsung is likely to build in Gwangju, while SK hynix is still scouting a location.
The new fabs will primarily boost memory chip production. Samsung leads the global market in DRAM and flash memory, while SK hynix controls more than half of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) segment, a critical component for artificial intelligence processors.
Most capacity will rely on legacy nodes necessary for manufacturing memory capacitors, though cutting-edge processes will be used for logic dies within advanced HBM stacks. Separately, Samsung also recently debuted its Exynos 2600, a two-nanometer mobile processor featuring a post-quantum cryptography module.
Beyond semiconductors, officials plan to invest over 1,000 trillion won in AI data centers by 2035, aiming to add 18.4 gigawatts of computing capacity. SK Group, the parent company of SK hynix, is participating in that parallel initiative.