SK Hynix pulled in $67.2 billion in revenue in 2025, a 42.3% jump from the year before. Intel, over the same stretch, brought in $48.5 billion, down 3.7%.
That swap pushed SK Hynix from fourth to third among the world’s chip suppliers, with Intel landing behind it.
Memory had a very good year
The engine behind SK Hynix’s surge is high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. Think of it as the express lane that feeds data to AI processors. Without it, a top-tier accelerator spends a lot of time waiting around.
SK Hynix holds roughly 50% of the HBM market. That share has slipped slightly as Samsung gains ground, but SK Hynix remains the leading HBM supplier to Nvidia.
The profitability is the eye-catching part. SK Hynix posted operating margins of around 76% in the second quarter of 2026, driven by strength in HBM and DRAM. For context, that means about three quarters of every revenue dollar survived operating costs.
The broader picture tilts the same way. The top 10 chip suppliers captured two-thirds of a record semiconductor market in 2025. Memory makers Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, along with Nvidia, drove most of that growth.
Intel was the one exception. It was the sole decliner among the top 10 in a year when the overall market hit a record.
Intel’s response: raise cash, partner up
The company has also been reporting net losses. That stands in sharp contrast to SK Hynix, whose margins look more like those of a software firm than a hardware manufacturer.
In August 2026, Intel completed an upsized $20 billion common stock offering. The deal sold 210.5 million shares at $95 each. The proceeds are earmarked for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures.
Then on October 6, 2026, Intel and Applied Materials announced a technical collaboration. The work will take place at Applied’s EPIC Center and Intel’s Oregon R&D site.
The partnership targets next-generation transistors, interconnect scaling and advanced packaging for AI workloads.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.