East coast site under review as SK Hynix commits $4 billion to Indiana HBM packaging

Solidigm, SK Hynix's NAND flash subsidiary, is evaluating US sites for a new fabrication plant. Korean industry sources cited by Reuters and the Seoul Economic Daily name upstate New York among the candidates. A US facility would let the company deploy the 375-layer technology currently blocked at its Dalian, China plant by US export controls.

What would a US plant change?

A US fab would let Solidigm move beyond its 192-layer floating-gate technology to SK Hynix's charge-trap roadmap, currently at 321 and 375 layers. The Dalian facility, a former Intel plant SK Hynix acquired in 2021, can only produce NAND at the 100-layer class under US export rules. That gap puts Solidigm behind Samsung and Micron on cost per bit for data center SSDs.

An SK Hynix spokesperson acknowledged the review without confirming a location. "Solidigm is reviewing various options to strengthen its competitiveness, but nothing has been finalized," the spokesperson said.

Why pursue a US site despite the cost?

US chip manufacturing costs more than operating fabs in South Korea or China, a real headwind in commodity NAND where margins stay thin. Two factors could offset that burden. A US Solidigm IPO, the subject of recent market speculation, could supply construction capital. A separate US entity would also sit at arm's length from SK Hynix, easing Seoul's concerns about weakening its domestic base.

The Trump administration has pushed to expand US memory chip production, and chairman Chey Tae-won has said American customers want SK Hynix to operate fabs on US soil. NAND matters less to AI workloads than HBM or DRAM, which makes a Solidigm-only US expansion easier to defend politically.

How do HBM and DRAM fit in?

SK Hynix is investing approximately $4 billion, or 5.35 trillion won, to build a high-bandwidth memory packaging facility in West Lafayette, Indiana. Reuters has also reported that SK Hynix is weighing a contract with Intel to manufacture some DRAM on US soil.

The strategy puts HBM and DRAM, the two products most critical to AI accelerators, ahead of NAND in the US buildout. AI demand for both continues to outrun supply.

How long will the memory crunch last?

Chey Tae-won has said the industry-wide undersupply of HBM, DRAM, and NAND will persist until around 2030, when supply and demand could return to balance. That view shapes the buildout timing across all three product types.

A US NAND fab would position Solidigm to ramp advanced-node output as the cycle tightens, rather than add capacity into a possible downturn. The trade-off is a longer construction runway and a higher cost per wafer.

What is SK hynix Ventures?

SK Hynix has launched SK hynix Ventures, a corporate venture capital arm covering AI computing, data center infrastructure, system software, and optical interconnect technologies. The unit held its inaugural Ventures Day in Silicon Valley and will own the US Solidigm business.

CEO Kwak Noh-jung framed the venture arm as a way to extend SK Hynix beyond memory chips. "Competitiveness in the AI era stems not just from rapidly securing innovative technologies, but from ecosystem capabilities where customers, partners, and startups create new value together," Kwak said. "Through SK hynix Ventures, we will support the growth of promising companies and grow into a global partner that jointly designs the future of AI infrastructure based on strategic investments and technological cooperation."

The bottom line: SK Hynix is threading multiple needles at once, expanding US HBM and DRAM capacity to satisfy Washington and AI customers, while exploring a US Solidigm site to break the technology ceiling on its Chinese fab.