Samsung Starts Onyang HBM Packaging Fab, 46 Trillion Won Total

Samsung Electronics will spend 46 trillion won, about $34 billion by Seeking Alpha's conversion, on a new HBM packaging campus at Onyang, and the first 6 trillion won fab broke ground on Thursday. President Lee Jae Myung, attending alongside Samsung Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, said roughly 40 trillion won — near $30 billion — of advanced equipment will follow, installed in phases.

The ceremony marks the first project launched under South Korea's regional industrial megaproject program. It targets the least glamorous and most congested step in the AI memory chain: packaging, where stacked DRAM dies are bonded into the HBM modules that sit beside Nvidia and AMD accelerators. AI server demand has outrun memory supply, and packaging is the choke point.

"The Onyang campus here in Asan will become a key hub for advanced HBM packaging," the president said at the event.

What gets built, and when?

Onyang Line 5 will be a three-story plant with about 31,000 square meters of cleanroom. It lifts the campus's total floor area from roughly 270,000 to about 420,000 square meters. The Korea Herald reports the line will produce HBM4E.

The schedule moved up. Operations begin in June 2028, a year earlier than planned, with HBM mass production from May 2029, according to Seeking Alpha. Samsung expects about 700 permanent jobs at the site.

Permits took about a third of the usual time, provincial and city authorities told The Korea Herald. The president pledged central and local government help with permits and with power and water infrastructure for projects across the Chungcheong, Honam and Yeongnam regions.

Is demand still outrunning supply?

Samsung said it has finished negotiating 2027 HBM supply volumes with customers, who are asking for more anyway, and it expects shortages to continue through 2028, The Korea Times reported. The company declined to name the customers.

Two recent signals frame the demand question. Samsung said this week it cut an 18-hour chip simulation to 17 seconds on Nvidia GPUs — evidence, depending on one's mood, of efficiency or of appetite. Separately, a Korean paper reported that OpenAI chief Sam Altman told Samsung executives some AI memory demand may be double-counted. If the second reading wins, 2028 starts to look busy for other reasons.

How large is the regional pledge?

Four Samsung affiliates now plan 144 trillion won of investment in the Chungcheong region, up 4 trillion won from the 140 trillion won announced in July. Samsung Electronics raised its own share from 56 to 60 trillion won.

• Samsung Display: 67 trillion won, OLED line in Asan
• Samsung Electronics: 60 trillion won, HBM packaging at Onyang
• Samsung SDI: 9 trillion won, battery R&D in Cheonan
• Samsung Electro-Mechanics: 8 trillion won, AI server substrates in Sejong

The affiliates carry their own timelines. Samsung Electro-Mechanics' Sejong substrate factory, serving AI server chip packages, starts mass production in September 2028. Samsung Display's A7 OLED line in Asan targets the second half of 2029.

The regional program extends beyond one conglomerate. Companies including Samsung and SK hynix pledged about 392 trillion won across the region in July, and the president said 112 additional companies will add 23.6 trillion won.

The bet, in short, is that packaging capacity, not wafer supply, decides who ships HBM in 2028 — and Samsung has moved its answer a year closer.