Do we like them?

Do we like SK Hynix?

South Korean maker of memory chips (DRAM, NAND, HBM for AI), based in Icheon, South Korea.

Our score: 5 out of 10. A world-leading AI memory maker with a patchy safety record and repeated legal trouble. We'd call it a mixed bet on conduct, not just on profit.

SK Hynix is one of the big three memory chip makers, alongside Samsung and Micron. It sits inside SK Group, chaired by Chey Tae-won. Kwak Noh-jung has been CEO since 2022. It's a key supplier of AI memory to Nvidia.

Safety has been a sore spot. Korea's Supreme Court upheld the guilt of the responsible people and the company over a 2015 asphyxiation accident. A national audit report also found it was exempt from regular labor inspections from 2016 to 2024, despite 61 industrial accidents and one death.

On competition, the company was fined about €51 million in 2010 for price fixing with other memory makers. In June 2026 a US class action accused Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron of coordinating to inflate DRAM prices. Those are allegations, not findings.

On pay, the Supreme Court sided with the company in February 2026 and held that performance bonuses don't count as ordinary wages for severance. Workers had also pushed for huge bonuses, which raised strike fears in 2025. Overall we see a mixed record, so 5.