Prediction: SK Hynix Will Become the Next Nvidia

Nvidia has played a pioneering relation successful the tract of artificial quality (AI) implicit the past 4 years. The company's graphics processing units (GPUs) person been deployed to bid fashionable ample connection models (LLMs), specified arsenic ChatGPT, and it remains the apical seller of AI chips by marketplace share.

The semiconductor bellwether controls much than 80% of the AI spot market. However, Nvidia banal has underperformed the broader marketplace successful 2026, gaining conscionable 8% arsenic compared to the 35% leap successful the Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector index. This underperformance tin beryllium attributed to the increasing competition, with rivals specified arsenic Intel, Broadcom, and Advanced Micro Devices witnessing beardown request for their server processors, graphics cards, and customized AI chips.

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The occupation for Nvidia is the emergence of alternate chips susceptible of handling AI workloads successful information centers. However, what's worthy noting is that each types of AI processors discussed truthful acold trust connected a captious constituent -- high-bandwidth representation (HBM). This is precisely wherefore I judge that South Korean representation elephantine SK Hynix (NASDAQ: SKHY) could go the adjacent Nvidia.

SK Hynix dominates the HBM marketplace

HBM helps AI accelerators to rapidly entree monolithic information sets acknowledgment to their tremendous bandwidth. Additionally, HBM reportedly consumes little powerfulness than modular dynamic random-access representation (DRAM) due to the fact that it is placed adjacent to AI accelerators, resulting successful little vigor procreation and vigor usage.

These characteristics of HBM assistance lick a cardinal bottleneck successful AI information centers. AI accelerators are known for their precocious processing speeds, which is wherefore they request to beryllium perpetually fed with monolithic amounts of information to execute seamlessly. So, it is casual to spot wherefore HBM request has been truthful beardown that determination is an acute proviso crunch.

According to DigiTimes, HBM prices could much than treble by adjacent year, jumping to $4 to $5 per gigabyte (GB) from an estimated $2 per GB successful the 2nd fractional of 2026. Not surprisingly, Micron Technology noted successful December 2025 that it expects the full addressable marketplace (TAM) for HBM to leap from $35 cardinal successful 2025 to $100 cardinal successful 2028.

The existent growth, however, could beryllium overmuch stronger. That's due to the fact that the depletion of HBM by customized AI processors unsocial is expected to turn by 35x betwixt 2024 and 2028, according to Counterpoint Research. All this is large quality for SK Hynix.