Samsung and SK Hynix will jointly invest 392 trillion won ($252.5 billion) in South Korea's Chungcheong region to build new high-bandwidth memory (HBM) fabs and packaging plants, the South Korean government announced on July 2. The buildout targets the packaging bottleneck that has constrained how fast AI accelerator supply can scale, since HBM output depends as much on advanced packaging capacity as on wafer production.
Samsung Group will put in 140 trillion won, including 56 trillion won from Samsung Electronics for a dedicated HBM fab and packaging facility, alongside display, substrate, and battery investments from its other units. SK Hynix will invest 100 trillion won, split between an 80 trillion won NAND flash fab (M17, breaking ground next year with operations targeted for the first half of 2029) and 20 trillion won for new advanced packaging facilities.
The project is expected to create roughly 250,000 jobs and is part of a broader push by Seoul to expand AI and semiconductor capacity outside the capital region, as memory makers race to keep pace with AI-driven demand for HBM chips used in GPUs and AI accelerators.