On Wednesday, U.S. storage concept stocks experienced a collective surge, with Seagate Technology PLC (STX.US) and SanDisk (SNDK.US) rising over 9%, Micron Technology (MU.US) gaining nearly 8%, and Western Digital (WDC.US) climbing more than 5%.

The rally follows reports that South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix has gained an upper hand in negotiations with NVIDIA for the supply of sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4). SK Hynix successfully raised the price by over 50% to approximately $560 per unit, reinforcing its dominance in the high-end memory chip market.

Analysts project that, driven by HBM4's high-profit margins and soaring prices of general-purpose DRAM, SK Hynix's operating profit could exceed 70 trillion won next year, setting a new record. The company has already sold out its production capacity for next year in advance.

Initially, NVIDIA resisted the significant price hike, leading to a standoff as Samsung Electronics and Micron were expected to supply HBM4 at scale. However, the final supply price was settled at around $560 per unit, as proposed by SK Hynix. An SK Hynix executive noted that the price increase was justified by process advancements and input costs.