Samsung Electronics crossed $1 trillion in total stock market value on May 6 after its shares rallied 14% on surging orders from AI data centres, making it only the second Asian company after Taiwan's TSMC to reach that level. Micron, the US memory chipmaker, followed on May 26 when its shares surged 19% after Swiss investment bank UBS raised its price target on the stock from $535 to $1,625, the highest target among all 46 analysts covering the company.
Today, May 27, South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix rose 11% and crossed $1 trillion in total stock market value for the first time, making South Korea the only country outside the United States with two companies simultaneously at that level.
All three crossed the milestone within 21 days of each other, and all three manufacture the same product: High-Bandwidth Memory chips, specialised chips that sit directly on top of Nvidia's AI processors inside data centres and give them the speed to process AI workloads. Samsung and SK Hynix together control approximately 80% of the global market for those chips, with Micron as the only other manufacturer at a commercial scale, according to market research firm IndexBox.
Peter Kim, global investment strategist at KB Securities, told CNBC's Squawk Box Asia this morning that "the fundamentals and valuations of the two twin towers are still very much intact," referring to SK Hynix and Samsung.
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Orders from AI data centres have grown faster than any of the three companies can fill them, and all three have sold out their entire chip production through 2026. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said in March that the global shortage is likely to persist until 2030 because building new manufacturing capacity takes four to five years minimum.
SK Hynix posted record quarterly revenue of $35.5 billion in Q1 2026 with an operating profit of $27.8 billion, driven almost entirely by chip sales to AI infrastructure clients. Samsung's semiconductor division posted $36.1 billion in operating profit over the same period, accounting for roughly 94% of Samsung's total quarterly profit across all its businesses. Micron reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $23.9 billion, up 196% compared with the same period the previous year.
MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, described SK Hynix as "clearly an outstanding AI Winner in Asia," saying its lead in the quality and supply of chips used in AI servers has been crucial during the current phase of AI infrastructure investment.
UBS raises Micron price target to $1,625 as SK Hynix posts 1,000% gain on surging AI memory chip demand
Swiss investment bank UBS raised its Micron price target from $535 to $1,625 on May 26, a 204% revision that immediately became the most bullish call on the stock among all major Wall Street research firms. The bank's analyst, Timothy Arcuri, projects Micron's annual earnings per share will exceed $100 from 2027 through 2029. Micron had already signalled its direction in December 2025, when it announced it was exiting the consumer memory market entirely to focus on AI data centre customers.
Meanwhile, SK Hynix shares have risen approximately 250% since January 2026, and Bloomberg reported today that the company's gains over the past 12 months now exceed 1,000%. South Korea's main stock market index, the Kospi, hit a record high today as the SK Hynix rally lifted the broader market.
Bank of America, too, projects the global market for AI memory chips will reach $54.6 billion in 2026, a 58% increase from the previous year, and estimates that the market will surpass the entire size of the 2024 global memory chip industry before 2028.
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