SEOUL: South Korea’s SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about a deal that would see it manufacture memory chips on US soil for the first time, three people familiar with the discussions said.
Under one potential scenario, SK Hynix would lease part of Intel’s long-planned chipmaking facility in Ohio, they said. Under another scenario, it could form a venture with Intel and major cloud firms that are keen to lock in memory chip supplies, two of the people said.
A deal would relieve pressure on Intel, which has been struggling, and mark a big win for the Trump administration, which has been ramping up pressure on chipmakers to build in the United States as relentless investment in AI and data centres fuels an acute shortage of memory chips.
But potential opposition from Seoul could be a major hurdle, the sources said.
One of the sources described the talks as exploratory and stressed that no decisions have been made, adding that SK Hynix might also consider other ways to structure the deal.
Details about how a SK Hynix-Intel deal might be structured are being reported for the first time. Reuters was, however, not able to learn what types of chips SK Hynix may manufacture in Ohio if an agreement is struck.
Its product lineup includes DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) chips used in servers, PCs and smartphones and NAND flash memory chips that provide long-term storage memory. It is also the leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI processing units.
POTENTIAL OPPOSITION FROM SEOUL
Any agreement to produce advanced memory such as HBM or even DRAM could run into opposition from the South Korean government, as those technologies are considered sensitive, said the three sources who declined to be identified as the information is not public.
SK Hynix said in a statement to Reuters that it is “reviewing various measures, including establishing additional production bases, to strengthen the competitiveness of its memory business”, but “no matters have been determined at this stage”.
Intel declined to comment on what it called speculation, but added that it was continuing with investments in Ohio to ready the site.
Asked about a potential SK Hynix plan to produce chips in the US, South Korea’s trade ministry said any decision would be at the company’s discretion, but if it involved a “national core technology”, it would be subject to a review under the Industrial Technology Protection Act.
The US Commerce Department did not respond to a request for comment.
