SK Hynix (000660) will complete its acquisition of Intel's NAND business next month, taking full control of the operations. After achieving record-breaking performance in the NAND sector last year, SK Hynix will secure complete control over core assets, including a factory in China, and accelerate its offensive in the global NAND market.

According to the semiconductor industry on the 23rd, SK Hynix will pay the remaining 2.235 billion USD of the second contract for the acquisition of Intel's NAND business next month. SK Hynix will finally acquire legal ownership, including NAND design assets (IP), research and development (R&D) and production facility personnel.

SK Hynix decided to acquire Intel's NAND business in October 2020 to diversify its business portfolio, which was focused on DRAM. The total acquisition price is 8.844 billion USD, the largest ever M&A deal by a Korean company. In the first phase of the acquisition, which was completed at the end of 2021, 6.609 billion USD was paid, and the Solid State Drive (SSD) business division was transferred.

SK Hynix's acquisition of Intel's NAND business is aimed at expanding its market share in the enterprise SSD market. Intel was the world's second-largest NAND business operator after Samsung Electronics (005930). SK Hynix, which had relatively weak competitiveness in the NAND sector, quickly established a two-way system with Samsung by acquiring Intel's business, which ranked second.

SK Hynix plans to finalize the acquisition process and strengthen its position in the rapidly growing NAND market with AI as a stepping stone. With the recent expansion of data center investment by tech giants such as Google and Meta, the AI market is rapidly growing, and demand for enterprise SSD products is increasing beyond High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), where SK has strengths. Last year, SK Hynix's NAND division achieved record-breaking sales of 19.106 trillion won. In 2019, sales were only 5 trillion won, but it has grown four times in five years.

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