Foreign media: South Korea's chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are increasing their investments in China to address the global shortage of AI memory.
Samsung invested 465.4 billion KRW (308.8 million USD) in its Xi'an chip factory in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 67.5%; SK Hynix invested 581.1 billion KRW in its Wuxi plant (up 102%) and 440.6 billion KRW in its Dalian plant (up 52%).
The Xi'an plant accounts for about 40% of Samsung's NAND production capacity, while the Wuxi plant accounts for over 30% of SK Hynix's DRAM production capacity.
Analysts believe that building new factories takes 3–5 years, so optimizing existing Chinese production capacity offers a faster response to supply demands. However, this trend may not be sustainable due to U.S. export controls on China. Both companies had paused or reduced investments in China between 2020 and 2023, only recently resuming in the past couple of years.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1861012386085963/
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