Samsung Electronics has appointed Jun Young Hyun as the new head of the semiconductor division to catch up with SK Hynix in the booming field of artificial intelligence (AI).
The Zhitong Finance App learned that Samsung Electronics has appointed Jun Young Hyun as the new head of the semiconductor division to catch up with SK Hynix in the booming field of artificial intelligence (AI). Jun has extensive experience in the field of memory chips. Jun joined Samsung's semiconductor division in 2000 and helped the company develop basic DRAM and flash memory chips for smartphones and servers.
Kyung Kye-hyun, the former head of Samsung's semiconductor division, will head the Samsung Advanced Technology Research Institute and future business team.
The move comes at a time when Samsung is falling behind in one of the key growth areas of memory chips. SK Hynix has taken a leading position in the field of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for artificial intelligence model training.
SK Hynix recently announced the fastest revenue growth rate since at least 2010. This has driven SK Hynix's stock price up 36% since the beginning of 2024, and the performance far exceeds that of Samsung stock, which has hardly changed.
SK Hynix is the world's largest storage provider for developing services like ChatGPT. Almost all of the company's chip production capacity is scheduled for next year.
SK Hynix plans to spend around US$14.6 billion to build a new integrated facility in South Korea to meet demand for HBM chips. The company also built a $4 billion packaging facility in Indiana.
Samsung has also begun global expansion, including investing $40 billion in US chip manufacturing.
Samsung said it has begun mass production of the latest 8-layer HBM3E and plans to mass produce 12-layer HBM chips in the second quarter. The company anticipates that by 2024, its supply of HBM will increase by at least three times compared to last year.