The SK Hynix Inc. logo is displayed on a glass door at the company’s office in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, Jan. 27, 2014. SK Hynix aims to select a U.S. site for its advanced chip packaging plant and break ground there around the first quarter of next year.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
South Korea’s SK Hynix on Thursday posted record operating profit and revenuein the second quarter on sustained demand for its high bandwidth memory technology used in generative AI chipsets.
Here are SK Hynix’s second-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
Revenue: 22.23 trillion won ($16.17 billion) vs. 20.56 trillion won
Operating profit: 9.21 trillion won vs. 9 trillion won
Revenue rose about 35% in the June quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit rose nearly 69%, year on year.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue rose 26%, while operating profit jumped 24%.
The company said in a statement that it enjoyed strong demand and favorable pricing conditions in the first half of the year. SK Hynix added that there was a low likelihood of sharp demand corrections for the rest of 2025, due to stable customer inventory levels and expected demand from new product launches.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory — a type of semiconductor memory commonly found in PCs, workstations and servers that is used to store data and program code.
Much of the company’s recent success can be credited to its business in high bandwidth memory, or HBM — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers.
SK Hynix has established itself as the global leader in HBM, supplying clients such as U.S. AI darling Nvidia. In the first quarter, this had seen the company overtake rival Samsung Electronics in the global DRAM market for the first time, according to Counterpoint Research.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month estimated that SK Hynix had tied Samsung’s combined DRAM and NAND revenues in the second quarter, with both vying for the top position in the global memory market. NAND is a type of flash memory that is commonly used in storage devices.
Samsung and US.-based memory maker Micron Technology are both seeking to catch up to SK Hynix in the HBM space. However, analysts expect SK Hynix’s dominance to persist in the short-term.
“As of now, I believe SK Hynix still holds its leadership in the HBM race … despite Samsung’s and Micron’s catch‑up efforts,” said Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group.
“I expect this edge to persist through the rest of 2025 and extend into 2026,” he added.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers.
Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta’s chief AI officer.
“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”
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In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg’s June memo.
Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.
The social media company will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.
“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote Friday.
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies, speaks on a panel titled Power, Purpose, and the New American Century at the Hill and Valley Forum at the U.S. Capitol on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Palantir has hit another major milestone in its meteoric stock rise. It’s now one of the 20 most valuable U.S. companies.
The provider of software and data analytics technology to defense agencies saw its stock rise more than 2% on Friday to another record, lifting the company’s market cap to $375 billion, which puts it ahead of Home Depot and Procter & Gamble. The company’s market value was already higher than Bank of America and Coca-Cola.
Palantir has more than doubled in value this year as investors ramp up bets on the company’s artificial intelligence business and closer ties to the U.S. government. Since its founding in 2003 by Peter Thiel, CEO Alex Karp and others, the company has steadily accrued a growing list of customers.
Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business increased 45% to $373 million in its most recent quarter, while total sales rose 39% to $884 million. The company next reports results on Aug. 4.
Buying the stock at these levels requires investors to pay hefty multiples. Palantir currently trades for 273 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. The only other company in the top 20 with a triple-digit ratio is Tesla at 175.
With $3.1 billion in total revenue over the past year, Palantir is a fraction the size of the next smallest company by sales among the top 20 by market cap. Mastercard, which is valued at $518 billion, is closest with sales over the past four quarters of roughly $29 billion.
CEO Elon Musk first teased the concept of building a drive-in themed charging station in 2018. On Monday, that vision was finally realized. Tesla describes the two-story restaurant, constructed of a steel exterior inspired by the Cybertruck, as retro-futuristic. It features 80 charging stalls and two 66-foot megascreens playing a rotation of short films, feature-length movies and Tesla videos.
The diner operates 24/7 serving classic American comfort food, such as burgers, grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshakes, to both electric vehicle owners charging their cars and the general public. CNBC visited the site and spoke with early patrons, who praised both the design and the food.
“It’s pretty cool. It has a very vintage vibe, but futuristic vibe at the same time” said Taju, who stopped by with a friend who drives a Tesla.
“I would bring friends from out of town, they would be very impressed coming to a place like this” said Don, a Model 3 owner who visited with his wife and neighbor.
Also on display for a limited time was Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, which served popcorn and interacted playfully with guests. Less than 24 hours after opening, the line to order food stretched around the block.
Musk has said that if the concept proves successful, Tesla may open similar diner Supercharger stations in other major cities.
Watch the video to see what it’s like inside Tesla’s first diner charging station.