South Korea’s two biggest chipmakers are fighting over engineers with paychecks, job postings, and now the courts. The prize is the workforce that builds HBM memory, the component Nvidia’s accelerators cannot do without.
SK Hynix, whose HBM business has made it the country’s most valuable company at times this year, agreed to hand over 10% of operating profit in bonuses. That works out to roughly $476K per employee in 2026, mostly cash. Samsung struck its own union deal in May, paying 10.5% of semiconductor profits for a decade, but mostly in stock that vests over three years. The gap widens inside Samsung: memory staff are projected to collect about $400K while foundry workers, whose division loses money, would see closer to $135K.
The disparity is pushing people out the door. One foundry engineer told MIT Technology Review that 28 of 30 people on his team applied to SK Hynix in July. A union survey found 81.5% of foundry staff want out within two years, and the union claims more than 200 members already left in four months.
Samsung is fighting back legally. In July it won an injunction blocking two former NAND engineers from working at SK Hynix for 18 months, with the court citing chips as protected national core technology. Analysts say the brain drain hits Samsung where it is most exposed: as the only memory maker with its own foundry, it needs those engineers for HBM4 base dies that rivals must outsource to TSMC.
