SK Hynix Bounces Back 16% as Nvidia Pact and $28 Million Machine Order Fuel HBM4 Expansion — But an ETF Glitch Draws Regulators

A bizarre pricing breakdown in a highly leveraged exchange-traded fund briefly stole the spotlight from SK Hynix’s dramatic recovery on Tuesday, as the South Korean chipmaker clawed back nearly all of a one-day rout triggered by the KOSPI’s deepest plunge in months. Shares of the memory giant surged to 2,215,000 won, a gain of almost 16%, erasing a roughly 8% decline from the prior session that had knocked the index offline temporarily.

Behind the rebound lies a freshly minted pact with Nvidia that goes far beyond plain-vanilla chip supply. SK Hynix will fold Nvidia’s software tools — including simulation programs and so-called digital twins — directly into its own chip-design workflow, a move designed to accelerate the production of next-generation high-bandwidth memory. Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, visiting Seoul, called the recent industry selloff a clear buying opportunity, a comment that retail investors took to heart. Net purchases by individual traders hit nearly 471 billion won on Tuesday alone.

The HBM4 race is now a three-way contest. Nvidia confirmed that SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron have all been qualified to supply the memory modules for its upcoming Vera Rubin computing platform. Analysts estimate SK Hynix will capture 60% to 70% of the initial HBM4 output, with Samsung taking roughly a quarter. The opening of what was once a near-monopoly supply chain introduces genuine competition into the tightest bottleneck in artificial intelligence hardware.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SK Hynix?

That competition is already triggering capital spending. SK Hynix has ordered around $28 million worth of new production equipment from Hanmi Semiconductor, machines designed to manufacture the sixth generation of HBM memory — the specific HBM4 chips that Nvidia needs. The gear is slated to be operational in the Cheongju plant by early September 2026. Meanwhile, industrial gas group Air Liquide is investing nearly €200 million in a new nitrogen production facility in South Korea that will exclusively supply SK Hynix’s packaging centre from late 2027. The chipmaker itself plans to build four new factories by 2034, with the first in Yongin coming online in early 2027, a response to chronic space constraints around Seoul that the government is now subsidising.

Operationally, the business is running at full throttle. In the first quarter of 2026, SK Hynix more than tripled revenue year over year, while operating profit exploded 405%. The margin is staggering: for every 100 won of sales, 72 won falls through as operating profit. Since January, the stock has soared 227%, leaving it just 8% below the all-time high set the previous week. Management aims to double production capacity over the next five years to keep pace with demand.

Looking further ahead, the company will ship first samples of the seventh-generation HBM4E memory in the second half of 2026, with mass production scheduled for 2027. These chips will underpin a Nvidia platform due at the end of that year, extending SK Hynix’s role as a central beneficiary of the AI boom.

Yet the wild swings of the past two days have exposed a structural flaw in the market. On Monday, while SK Hynix shares fell roughly 8%, a leveraged ETF tracking the stock briefly exploded 50% higher. The premium over net asset value hit nearly 86%. The anomaly occurred in the closing auction, where liquidity providers are not required to quote binding prices. A handful of unlimited buy orders pushed the ETF artificially higher in thin trading. South Korea’s financial regulator is now reviewing the incident and has placed three affected ETFs on a warning list, a move that may force changes to market design as trading volumes in derivative products surge.

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