SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won expressed concerns about "chipflation"—soaring memory semiconductor prices worldwide—and said the company will "soon announce a new plan for price stabilization."
The announcement aims to sustain artificial intelligence ecosystem growth by stabilizing prices, given the reality that memory supply cannot be dramatically increased in the short term.
Chey made the remarks at Nvidia's annual developer conference GTC 2026, held at the San Jose Convention Center in California on March 16.
"AI has driven up demand for High Bandwidth Memory, and producing HBM requires significant wafer consumption," Chey said. "The supply shortage stems from wafer scarcity. Securing more wafers takes at least four to five years, and global wafer supply shortage will persist at over 20% through 2030."
He noted there is no immediate solution to the supply crunch. "Rapidly increasing wafer production is physically impossible, so we need to look at least two to three years ahead," he said.
"We will do our best for price stabilization," Chey added. "While I cannot disclose details, I understand CEO Kwak Noh-jung will soon announce a new plan to stabilize DRAM prices."
Chey has publicly warned about memory shortages since late last year. At the SK AI Summit 2025 in November, he said: "We are receiving memory semiconductor supply requests from many companies, and I am deeply concerned about how to respond to all of them. Taking responsibility for supply is the path for our customers."
At the Transpacific Dialogue hosted by the Chey Institute for Advanced Studies in Washington, D.C. last month, he pointed out a market distortion: "HBM margins are 60%, while conventional chip margins are 80%."
Chey ruled out building new overseas factories to expand supply. "Whether Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, or the United States—securing power and water is difficult everywhere," he said. "Expansion is not something that can be done easily just because we want it."
On the possibility of listing SK Hynix American Depositary Receipts in the United States, Chey expressed a positive view: "It would expose us not only to Korean shareholders but also to U.S. and global shareholders, allowing us to become a more global company."
