SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron form a de facto memory-chip oligopoly that has captured enormous profits from the AI capex boom, with SK Hynix's stock up 6x and its Korean shares hard for Americans to access directly.
Rory explains that SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron form a memory-chip oligopoly that has profited enormously from the AI boom, with SK Hynix stock up 6x, setting up context for its record NASDAQ listing. ✦ AI generated
Rory · 20VC · 2026-07-16 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 36:57
“The infrastructure that powers foundation models, SKHix, NASDAQ listing. You want to go there, Rory?”
There are three memory companies. They have been a huge beneficiary of the AI capex boom in the last year. Those stock um skinex is up 6x, right? Two of the three are based in Korea. Samsung and SKH Highex, Micron is based in Idaho. go America and the truth is it's at igopoly they've made out like bandits and it's actually very hard to buy stocks in Korea
verbatim transcript · starts at 36:57
36:57They have been a huge beneficiary of the AI capex boom in the last year. Those stock um skinex is up 6x, right? Two of the three are based in Korea. Samsung and SKH Highex, Micron is based in Idaho. go America and the truth is it's at igopoly they've made out like bandits and it's actually very hard to buy stocks in Korea which is why even today interestingly enough after the ADR is
37:22traded in the US stock exchange it's still trading at a 20% premium to the same stock in Korea because it's just hard for an American to open a brokerage account in Korea by the Swedish buy the Korean things so I I think it's just good that these guys are accessing the capital markets >> next NASDAQ listing large ever by a foreign company. uh had a great reaction
37:44popped 13% at close of day >> and then back down and then I mean look had a very difficult day I think yesterday and last couple of days right and yeah it would be tempting to go to some kind of oh my god the AI capex bubble is busting and at some point it will but I actually think a lot of that there's a lot of weird technical stuff
38:03going on there because the two no surprise the two memory companies dominate the Korean stock market they are the two companies Samsung and highex are 60% of the stock market and roughly 120% of the of the GDP in terms of market cap. They're just huge, right? They're highly volatile. They're very there's lots of retail action in Korea. So there's just a lot of intraday volatility in the Korean stock exchange.
38:29It's all kind of crazy casino level wealth there, right? So even though the stocks moved down in the last couple days, it's not as clear. Is it fundamentally oh DRAM's connect correction or is it just weird kind of trading [ __ ] But I think on the DRAM thing, I mean the fun the fun bet there is I don't have an opinion on it, but those three
38:49companies are all trading at, you know, 5 to 8 PES. In other words, dirt cheap and 1 cents and any kind of screen and that's the bull case and this is going to last. And the bare case is these have traditionally been capital cyclical businesses. And the minute more capacity comes online, prices have gone up 6x in the last year, which is why operating margins have gone from negative in 23 to