A stalled American megafab may yet get a second life as a memory plant. Reuters reports that SK hynix is negotiating to build DRAM inside Intel’s Ohio campus, which would make it the Korean company’s first memory manufacturing on US soil.
Two structures are on the table. SK hynix could lease part of the New Albany site. It could also form a joint venture with Intel and cloud providers that want memory supply closer to their data centers.
Investors read the report as a win for both sides. Intel gained about 4 percent while SK hynix rose more than 3 percent, as analysts penciled in a paying tenant for a site Intel has funded alone.
Hurdles remain. Seoul has flagged the technology as potentially falling under its national core technology rules, which would give the government grounds to block a transfer. Korea pledged $350B of US investment under a tariff agreement, but only $150B has been allocated so far.
SK hynix is already building stateside, having broken ground last month on a high-bandwidth memory base in Indiana. Chairman Chey Tae-won has argued for a US factory since July, and floated a Japanese memory venture in early September before Kioxia showed little interest.
For Micron, the only American DRAM maker, the read-through is mixed. A Korean rival producing on US soil would erode a home-market edge that Washington’s chip subsidies were designed to protect.
