CHIPS

Ohio Emerges as a New Hub for Korean Chips

When Intel began construction of its massive campus in New Albany, Ohio, in 2022, the project looked like the return of an iconic American manufacturer to its home soil after decades of expanding production overseas. Four hundred hectares of land, enough space for eight semiconductor fabrication plants, and promises of hundreds of billions of dollars in investment were all supposed to symbolize the revival of the American semiconductor industry. However, as often happens, reality introduced some harsh adjustments.

Today, four years later, this ambitious project is hanging by a thread, and its future may end up in the hands of a competitor: South Korea’s SK hynix. Negotiations over a possible acquisition of the Ohio campus are reportedly taking place behind closed doors. Although the potential purchase price remains closely guarded, the very possibility of such a transaction has shaken the markets and prompted analysts to reconsider the balance of power within the global semiconductor industry.

For SK hynix, this would not simply be another deal aimed at increasing production capacity. It would be a strategic move capable of completely transforming the company’s position in the US market while also satisfying growing political pressure from Washington. For several years, the US administration has urged semiconductor manufacturers to move production facilities to American soil and reduce their dependence on Asian manufacturing. SK hynix appears ready to answer that call—not by building an entirely new factory from scratch, but by purchasing infrastructure that is already close to completion.

Interestingly, the Korean company already has experience working with former Intel assets. In 2020, SK hynix agreed to acquire Intel’s NAND flash memory business for $9 billion, making it the largest transaction in the company’s history. Now, another piece of Intel’s former empire may be up...

There is a certain irony in the fact that, at the height of a geopolitical crisis — while the world watches Iranian negotiations and anxiously awaits U.S. inflation data — Samsung is calmly and methodically laying the foundation for a new factory in Vietnam. No panic, no loud statements — just dust on a construction site in Thailand’s Thai Nguyen province and two hundred engineers who, since April, have been preparing the ground for another technological leap.

The investment totals 39 trillion Vietnamese dong, or roughly $1.5 billion. It will become Samsung’s first semiconductor testing plant ever built on Vietnamese soil. And its emergence says far more about the global restructuring of the chip industry than all the headlines about trade wars combined.

Traditional Chips: The Invisible Heroes of the Digital Age

When people talk about semiconductor shortages, they usually picture cutting-edge AI processors, high-performance HBM memory, and Nvidia accelerators. But reality is more complicated. Samsung’s new facility will focus on what industry insiders call “legacy” chips — mature, traditional technologies.

These are the previous generations of DRAM and NAND memory chips that never make headlines, yet without them no car starts, no router powers on, and no washing machine runs.

The paradox is that these chips are currently in severe shortage. While Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron chase massive profits from supplying memory for AI data centers, traditional customers — smartphone makers, laptop manufacturers, and automakers — are left empty-handed. Manufacturing capacity is no longer enough for everyone.

Samsung’s new plant is an attempt to fill that gap. The facility is designed for annual output of 153 billion gigabits of DRAM and 255 billion gigabits of NAND — figures staggering even to veteran semiconductor engineers.

Why Vietnam — Not China, Korea, or the United States

The answer to “why...