HBM

All three major memory chipmakers crossed $1 trillion in market cap within weeks as AI demand, sold-out HBM4 capacity, and a landmark UBS upgrade triggered a historic valuation surge.

South Korean memory giant reported 37.6 trillion won in operating profit on 52.6 trillion won in revenue, a 405% year-over-year jump and the highest operating margin in its history at 72%, as HBM and high-density server DRAM rode an AI-driven demand wave.

The two companies held a formal kick-off event in Milpitas, California, advancing HBF as a new memory tier that promises 8-16x higher capacity than HBM at comparable cost, with first samples expected in the second half of 2026 and inference devices arriving in early 2027.

Google Research unveils TurboQuant, a training-free compression algorithm that reduces LLM key-value cache memory by 6x and boosts inference throughput up to 8x, sending SK Hynix and Samsung shares down 5-6 percent.

Micron Technology posted record fiscal Q2 revenue of 23.9 billion dollars, nearly tripling year over year on surging AI memory demand, while guiding fiscal Q3 to 33.5 billion dollars -- a single quarter that would exceed its entire annual revenue through fiscal 2024.

Both GPU makers are shifting mainstream production to 8 GB models as DRAM prices surge 180 percent, MSI calls 2026 its hardest year since founding, and IDC warns the sub-$500 PC market may vanish by 2028.