SK hynix held its official groundbreaking ceremony for its first AI memory advanced packaging production facility in the U.S.
The South Korean semiconductor giant is making a total expected investment of more than $4 billion into the facility, located in West Lafayette, Indiana. It is scheduled to open its cleanroom by October 2028 and begin mass production of next-generation HBM (high-bandwidth memory) in H2 2029.
"It is projected to grow into a key HBM production hub in the U.S. led by a workforce of approximately 1,000 personnel during anticipated commercial operations," SK hynix said in a statement.
The Indiana fab is SK hynix's first HBM production base in the U.S., which will operate closely with the company's South Korea production line. SK hynix will ship wafers fabricated in South Korea to Indiana for advanced packaging and testing, then sell them to U.S. customers as finished HBM.
SK hynix is also building an R&D testbed facility for advanced packaging of HBMs, so that customers, universities, and business partners can collaborate on next-generation technologies.
HBM is a core part of the hardware running today's AI systems. It is the high-speed memory that sits next to GPUs and feeds them the data they need to train and serve models. SK hynix is a leading supplier of that memory, alongside Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology.
The latest project follows a recent Bloomberg report in July saying that U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pressed SK hynix and Samsung Electronics to expand memory chip manufacturing in the U.S. to ease AI-related shortages.
Meanwhile, the company, already listed on the Korea Exchange, listed American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq in July, raising $26.5 billion. This ranked among the largest equity offerings ever recorded. While the ADRs were priced at $149, SKHY closed Thursday at $161.61, up 2.27%.