SK Hynix, Samsung surge as OpenAI’s Astra fuels AI chip demand

Shares of SK Hynix ↗ 2.78% jumped more than 7% and Samsung Electronics climbed over 5% in Seoul trading on Monday after OpenAI's release of its GPT-6 Astra model last week reignited investor enthusiasm for memory chip makers at the center of the AI infrastructure buildout.cnbc+1

The broad rally in South Korean semiconductor stocks came as the market digested comments from Nvidia ↗ 2.78% CEO Jensen Huang, who declared on X that "AGI has arrived" following the Astra launch. "From ChatGPT to o1 to Astra in 4 years," Huang wrote on September 6, noting that the model was trained on more than 100,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell systems and that 400,000 GPUs were "coming online next".investing

Astra Fuels AI Demand Expectations

OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on September 3, calling it "the world's most intelligent and aligned model". The model scored 98% on FrontierMath Tier 4 and 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3, according to OpenAI. The company is rolling it out to paid ChatGPT users and through its API and Amazon Web Services Amazon.com, Inc. ↘ 0.35%.unite+2

The release lifted chip stocks across the board in Seoul. SK Square also gained more than 5%, while DB HiTek surged nearly 13%, according to the Korea Economic Daily. Analysts said the prospect of more advanced AI models requiring greater computing and memory capacity supported the case for sustained demand for high-bandwidth memory.bloomingbit+1

Memory Market Already Tightening

The rally landed amid an already-tight memory market. TrendForce data released on September 7 showed global DRAM revenue surged 59.5% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter to $15.47 billion, with inventories at record lows. Samsung held 39.4% market share, followed by SK Hynix at 24.9% and Micron ↗ 5.12% at 23.3%.bloomingbit

KB Securities analyst Kim Dong-won said Samsung and SK Hynix held fewer than 10 days of memory inventory as of the third quarter, warning that available supply risked becoming "absolutely insufficient".bloomingbit

Spending Forecasts Point Higher

S&P Global Ratings projects combined capital expenditure by six major hyperscalers — Alphabet ↗ 0.78%, Amazon, Meta ↗ 0.84%, Microsoft ↘ 0.99%, Oracle ↗ 0.82%, and SpaceX — will exceed $1.3 trillion in 2027, up from an estimated $870 billion this year. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress cited a similar figure, noting cloud industry backlogs now top $2 trillion. For memory makers already running near empty, the spending wave suggests the tightest supply conditions may still lie ahead.press.spglobal+2