SK Hynix logo displayed on a phone screen as seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on January 30, 2023.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
South Korea’s SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest memory chipmakers, on Thursday posted record quarterly profit, boosted by strong demand for its high bandwidth memory (HBM) used in generative AI.
Here are SK Hynix’s third-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
Revenue: 17.57 trillion won ($12.7 billion) vs. 18.11 trillion won
Operating profit: 7.03 trillion won ($5.08 billion) vs. 6.8 trillion won
Operating profit in the July-September quarter hit its highest level, rebounding from a loss of 1.8 trillion won during the same period last year.
Quarterly revenue grew about 94% year-on-year from 9.1 trillion won.
The South Korean chip giant is a key supplier to Nvidia and has benefitted from a boom in artificial intelligence servers.
SK Hynix said in its earnings release Thursday that demand for AI memory, particularly from data center customers, continued to be strong in the third quarter, allowing it to expand sales of premium products such as HBM and eSSD, a core component of AI chips.
HBM is a type of dynamic random access memory, known as DRAM, where chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption. SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics are the three main manufacturers of HBM chips.
Sales of HBM products were up more than 70% from the previous quarter and more than three times from the same period last year, and the company expects continued growth.
“While the demand of memory for AI servers such as HBM and eSSD has grown noticeably this year, the company predicts that this trend will continue next year,” the firm said in a press release.
Generative AI continues to advance and large tech companies continue to invest to develop the technology, the company said.
SK Hynix also forecasted that demand from the PC and mobile consumer product markets will be on a steady growth path next year amid the emergence of AI-optimized devices.
The company said last month that it has started mass production of its latest version of HBM chips and aims for delivery by the end of the year.
SK Hynix shares initially dropped 0.4% when the markets opened in South Korea on Thursday, before recovering to trade up 1.3%.
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.
The stock rose in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected
Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.
The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.
Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.
“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.
Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.
However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.
Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.
The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter fromAlphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.
“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.
YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.
Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.
This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”
In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.
Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.
In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”
YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.
YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.
Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.
YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.
In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.
People walk past an Amazon Fresh store in Washington, DC, on August 26, 2021.
Nicholas Kamm | AFP | Getty Images
Amazon plans to close all of its Fresh supermarkets in the U.K., in the latest recalibration of its grocery strategy.
The company said in a Tuesday blog that it’s preparing to close all 19 of its Fresh U.K. stores, “following a thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery.” Five of the Fresh locations are expected to be converted into Whole Foods stores, Amazon said.
Amazon opened its first Fresh location outside the U.S. in London in 2021, about a year after it debuted the store concept in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Fresh stores offer cheaper prices and more mass-market items compared to Whole Foods, the upscale supermarket chain Amazon acquired for $13.7 billion in 2017. Many of the stores also feature Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology.
The Fresh store pullback in the U.K. comes as Amazon has continued to adjust its grocery ambitions. The company has slowed expansion of its Fresh grocery chain and Go cashierless stores in the U.S. It still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.
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At the same time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items like canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks.
Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.
The company on Tuesday also said that it plans to offer same-day delivery of groceries, including perishable items, in the U.K. beginning next year.