By Kwanwoo Jun
Shares of South Korean large-cap chip makers rallied on Monday, tracking gains by U.S. peers over the weekend.
The surge in SK Hynix and Samsung, whose combined market capitalization accounts for more than a third of Korea's benchmark Kospi, sent the index around 4% higher in early trade on Monday.
Korean chip stocks tracked the tech-heavy Nasdaq's 2.2% rise on Friday, when Nvidia and Micron Technology ended sharply higher.
Shares of Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, were also helped by a local media report that the company could start mass production of high bandwidth memory 4 products--the most advanced type of dynamic random access memory---to power Nvidia's Vera Rubin artificial intelligence accelerators in the third week of February.
The company declined to comment on the report, while reaffirming its earlier schedules for HBM4 shipments.
On an earnings call in late January, Samsung said that its HBM4 mass production and shipments would start in the first quarter of 2026, likely in February.
SK Hynix, which claims to have completed developing HBM4 products ahead of its rivals and had dominated the markets for previous versions of high bandwidth memory chips, has said it is preparing to ship the advanced chips.
Nvidia supplier SK Hynix's stock was recently 5.5% higher, while Samsung Electronics, gained 5.0%.
Write to Kwanwoo Jun at kwanwoo.jun@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 08, 2026 21:56 ET (02:56 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.