KB Securities released a report on the 7th stating that the memory chip market may face an unprecedented supply shortage driven by a surge in AI infrastructure investment. The brokerage predicts that after recent stock price adjustments, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have entered undervalued territory and their stock prices are poised for a "strong revaluation."
KB Securities points out that global hyperscale cloud service providers have revised their AI infrastructure investment targets for next year to $1.3 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 60%. Of this, memory chips are expected to account for 40% of AI infrastructure investment from 14% in 2025 to 57% in 2026, and further to 57% in 2027. TrendForce even predicts that this proportion will reach 68% next year.
Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, stated that as of the third quarter, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix's memory chip inventory had fallen to less than 10 days' worth, and the market may face a situation where marketable inventory is completely depleted.
The brokerage believes that the mass production of HBM4, which is crowding out general-purpose DRAM capacity, will further exacerbate the supply shortage. Since HBM4 consumes approximately three times the wafer capacity of general-purpose DRAM, its expansion will significantly limit the overall supply growth of memory chips given the limited wafer capacity. KB Securities predicts that next year, the growth rate of DRAM and NAND bit demand will exceed the growth rate of supply by more than 10 percentage points, and the supply-demand gap may further widen.
