Chris Malachowsky, co-founder of Nvidia and known as the ‘father of the GPU,’ lavished praise on South Korea’s memory semiconductor technology, stating that without Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, today’s AI revolution would not exist. He made it clear that South Korea is a critical partner in an era where AI infrastructure is becoming a core national foundation. At the same time, at the world’s most prestigious semiconductor conference, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix jointly unveiled next-generation memory technologies, heralding the evolution beyond simple storage devices toward memory that can ‘think’ for itself.
Speaking at the 2026 US-Korea Conference (UKC) in Orlando, Florida on the 7th (local time), Nvidia Fellow Malachowsky said, “The HBM leadership driven by Samsung and SK hynix has become the foundation of global AI supercomputing. Without South Korea, there would be no Nvidia as we know it today, and no AI revolution.” Having co-founded Nvidia with CEO Jensen Huang and designed the technical foundation of the GPU, he stressed that AI infrastructure will become a critical national foundation akin to power grids or water systems. He also offered a positive assessment of the policy direction pursued by President Lee Jae-myung and the South Korean government.
Addressing recent concerns about overinvestment in AI infrastructure, Malachowsky dismissed them, stating, “The AI revolution is a platform transition that occurs maybe once in a generation. We are in the early innings, and the greatest innovations have yet to happen.” He underscored the importance of speed, noting, “Just as nations that built power grids and the internet first seized leadership, those that fail to rapidly build AI infrastructure will fall behind.” He specifically pointed out that “the future is built before it becomes clear,” and that waiting until demand is certain means it is already too late to invest.
He also forecast that the center of gravity for AI innovation will shift from large research labs to industrial sites. “Over the next decade, the most impactful discoveries will come from people applying AI to biology, medicine, climate science, and manufacturing,” he predicted, suggesting that explosive innovation will occur at the boundaries of disciplines when deeply specialized researchers encounter AI as a tool. Concurrently, regarding AI safety, he stressed the importance of open innovation, arguing that transparent verification through open-source ecosystems is a safer direction than monopolization by a few companies.
On the issue of jobs in the AI era, he defined “AI as a job creator.” His analysis suggests that even if some existing jobs are replaced, human capabilities amplified by AI will create even more new jobs. However, he warned, “AI will not replace jobs; people who use AI well will replace those who do not,” emphasizing the importance of deep expertise, intuition, and judgment.
Malachowsky’s assessment is drawing particular attention as it comes at a time when Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are fundamentally shifting the paradigm of memory technology. At the ‘Hot Chips’ high-performance semiconductor conference to be held in Silicon Valley at the end of August, the two companies will present side-by-side for the first time in a decade, unveiling next-generation memory roadmaps that expand their domain from ‘storage’ to ‘compute.’
Hot Chips is a prestigious event where companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel unveil next-generation chip architectures. This year, a ‘Memory Technology’ session has been formally established for the first time, demonstrating that memory has emerged as both the critical bottleneck and the key solution in the AI era. Having presented the future of HBM in 2016, the two companies are now showcasing technology that has evolved another step forward a decade later.
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) will put the HBM ‘Base Die’ front and center in its presentation. The base die is a core component that acts as a control tower at the bottom of the HBM stack. PL Han Sang-wook will present on the topic of ‘The Evolution of HBM Base Die Utilizing Logic Processes.’ This signifies that HBM competitiveness is expanding beyond simply stacking DRAM cells to encompass logic design and advanced process capabilities applied to the base die. Leveraging its strengths as an Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) possessing memory, logic design, foundry, and packaging capabilities, Samsung plans to target the custom HBM market optimized for customers like Nvidia, Google, and AMD.
Samsung is going a step further by expanding its ‘PIM (Processing-in-Memory)’ technology, which embeds computational functions directly into memory, into the mobile domain. On August 25th, it will present on ‘LPDDR5X-PIM.’ This technology grants computational functions to the low-power DRAM used in smartphones or AI PCs, allowing some inference tasks to be processed directly inside the memory without moving data to the CPU or GPU, dramatically improving power efficiency and processing speed. Samsung also plans to jointly present a CXL (Compute Express Link)-based memory solution with South Korean fabless startup Exina. This is an extension of the strategy to fundamentally resolve data movement bottlenecks and expand the role of memory from simple storage to computational assistance.
SK hynix (000660.KS) is putting ‘advanced packaging’ forward as its core topic. The presentation on ‘Advanced Packaging for HBM’ by Lee Jae-sik, Vice President of SK hynix America, focuses on back-end processing technologies that become increasingly critical with each successive HBM generation. To solve issues of chip heat, warpage, and yield, the company is strengthening cooperation with TSMC’s advanced packaging technology, ‘CoWoS,’ and is also reviewing the introduction of hybrid bonding technology for high-layer stacking of 16 layers or more.
Industry observers interpret these moves by the two companies as an inflection point where South Korea’s semiconductor industry is shedding its image as a mere ‘chip factory’ and elevating its status to a ‘core system design partner for AI.’ Just as Nvidia’s founder credited South Korean memory for the AI revolution, the fact that customers are beginning to recognize memory not as a simple component but as a strategic partner is expected to bring significant changes to future profitability and negotiating power.