South Korea’s $518 billion AI chip push shows crypto is still losing the capital race
Samsung and SK Hynix are pulling a chip-plant buildout forward by a decade to meet AI memory demand. It is the latest and largest sign of the AI capital cycle that has drawn money away from crypto all year.
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Summary
- South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plan to invest about $518 billion in four new chip plants to double national DRAM output within five years, accelerating their timeline by roughly a decade to meet surging AI demand.
- The two companies dominate the high-bandwidth memory market that powers AI training, have secured key supply deals with Nvidia and OpenAI, and SK Hynix is pursuing a roughly $29 billion U.S. listing to fund further expansion.
- The massive capital shift into AI chips has coincided with record outflows from U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs, weaker crypto prices and even bitcoin miners pivoting toward AI hosting, raising doubts about when or whether that risk capital will return to digital assets.
