South Korea bets big on AI boom
Seoul, SOUTH KOREA—Huge demand for the components that power artificial intelligence presents South Korea with an opportunity to bolster its chip industry against rivals such as China, analysts say.
Seoul announced huge private-public investments on Monday totaling nearly $1.2 trillion—equivalent to more than two-thirds of South Korea’s GDP—for new semiconductor factories and AI data centers.
Sky-high profits
Three companies dominate the global market for producing advanced memory chips that help power AI systems: US giant Micron, and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
These chips, called high-bandwidth memory (HBM), are used in AI processors alongside the powerful silicon known as GPUs that are made by the likes of California’s Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company.
Their profits and share prices have soared to dizzying heights as governments and tech companies plough hundreds of billions of dollars into training and running AI tools.
“AI has not only provided big demand, it has also created shortages, and that has driven price escalation,” Jim Handy, semiconductor expert at Objective Analysis, told AFP.
Soaring prices for memory and storage chips are being passed on to consumers, with Apple hiking the cost of MacBooks and iPads this month.
The boom has also fueled worker demands over pay packages, with Samsung averting a major strike in May by agreeing a deal on bonuses with its largest union.
Chinese competition
South Korea has pledged to triple spending on AI this year, aiming to join the United States and China as one of the world’s top AI powers.
With China in particular racing to develop its tech industry, Seoul sees the boom period as a “one-time opportunity” to close the gap, said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia.
“Its the perfect time” for South Korea to leverage its strategic advantage and make investments as “the AI boom might die down” and demand could regress, he told AFP.
The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Apple is seeking to buy memory chips from Chinese manufacturer CXMT—a company poised to benefit from shortages, along with Taiwanese rivals. AFP has approached Apple and CXMT for comment.
Although Chinese firms benefit from lower labor costs and big domestic demand, there could be limits to the country’s tech growth, Su said.
“People are less keen to… (become) overly reliant” on Chinese silicon, a factor that Korean vendors such as Samsung now want to “double down on.”
