Nvidia-supplier SK Hynix third-quarter profit jumps 62% to a record high on AI-fueled memory demand (www.cnbc.com)

South Korea’s SK Hynix reported record Q3 results as AI-driven demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) lifted revenue and profits: revenue rose about 39% year‑on‑year to 24.45 trillion won ($17.13B) and operating profit surged 62% to 11.38 trillion won, with quarter‑on‑quarter gains of 10% and 24% respectively. Results were broadly in line with analyst estimates. Management attributed the gains to increased sales of “high value‑added” memory products as customers expand investments in AI infrastructure. Technically, the boost comes from HBM — a high‑throughput variant of DRAM designed for data‑intensive workloads in AI servers and generative‑AI chipsets — where SK Hynix has an early lead and is a primary supplier to major AI chipmakers including Nvidia. Market forecasts expect the HBM segment to expand rapidly (Counterpoint projects roughly $43B by 2027), giving strong earnings leverage to memory makers. The key implication for the AI/ML community is continued tight coupling between AI training/inference scale-up and specialized memory supply; sustained performance gains and capacity growth will depend on SK Hynix (and peers) maintaining technological differentiation and ramping HBM volume to meet exploding data‑center demand.