SK Hynix Breaks Ground on Its First US Plant for AI Memory Chips
Chipmaker SK Hynix broke ground Aug. 27 on a plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, that the company says will be its first US base for producing high-bandwidth memory, the stacked DRAM used in AI accelerators. SK Hynix announced the ceremony in a release datelined Seoul, Aug. 28.
The Indiana site will handle advanced packaging, the back-end step that stacks or combines finished chips into a single package, along with testing. Wafers made by SK Hynix in South Korea will be shipped to Indiana for those steps before the finished parts are supplied to US customers, according to the release. Wafer fabrication itself stays in Korea.
SK Hynix puts total expected investment at "over $4 billion," says the cleanroom is scheduled to open by October 2028, and plans to start mass production of next-generation HBM in the second half of 2029. It expects about 1,000 staff during commercial operations and says it plans roughly 7,000 direct and indirect jobs with local and national companies across construction and later operations. More than 100 companies are under consideration as suppliers of materials, components and equipment, the release says.
The ceremony was held at Purdue University's Holloway Gymnasium, and SK Hynix signed a memorandum of understanding with Purdue for joint research on advanced packaging, including HBM. The company also says it will build an "Advanced Packaging R&D Testbed" next to the production lines, for customers, universities and partners to use for prototypes and performance testing.
Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, who attended, said in the release that he helped make the investment possible through the CHIPS and Science Act, the 2022 US law that funds domestic chip manufacturing.
Other attendees included Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, Purdue President Mitch Daniels, South Korean Ambassador to the US Kang Kyung-wha and SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung.
