South Korean memory chipmaker SK Hynix said Friday that it was ready to mass produce its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, staying ahead of rivals and sending the company’s stock soaring. 

HBM is a type of memory that is used in chipsets for artificial-intelligence computing, including in chips from global AI giant Nvidia — a major client of SK Hynix. 

SK Hynix said earlier this year that it had shipped samples of its HBM4 chips to customers, as it sought to beat competitors including Samsung Electronics and Micron Technologies.

According to its announcement Friday, the company has finished its internal validation and quality assurance process for HBM4 and is ready to manufacture those at scale.

“Completion of HBM4 development will be a new milestone for the industry,” said Joohwan Cho, head of HBM development at SK Hynix.

HBM4 is the sixth generation of HBM technology — a type of Dynamic Random Access Memory, or DRAM. DRAM can be found in personal computers, workstations and servers and is used to store data and program code.

SK Hynix’s latest HBM4 product has doubled bandwidth and increased power efficiency by 40% compared to the previous generation, according to the company.  

Notably, HBM4 is expected to be the main AI memory chip needed for Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin architecture — a more powerful AI chip for global data centers — said Dan Nystedt, vice-president at TriOrient, an Asia-based private investment firm with a focus on semiconductors.

“SK Hynix is a key supplier for Nvidia, and the announcement shows it remains far ahead of rivals,” he said.

Samsung Electronics and Micron have struggled to catch up to SK Hynix in HBM, as it builds on its segment leadership and benefits from being Nvidia’s main HBM supplier. 

However, the companies have made some progress. Micron has also shipped samples of its HBM4 products to customers, while Samsung has reportedly been working to get its HBM4 chips certified by Nvidia. 

“Despite the shifting competitive landscape, we anticipate SK Hynix will maintain a commanding position, potentially securing around 50% of the HBM market share by 2026,” said MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, covering memory solutions.

SK Hynix shares rose more than 7% Friday to hit their highest since 2000, following its chip announcement, bringing year-to-date gains to nearly 90%. Shares of Samsung Electronics and Micron have risen over 40% and nearly 80% in 2025, respectively.

SK Hynix posted record operating profit and revenue for its June-quarter, thanks to strong HBM demand, which accounted for 77% of its overall revenues. The company’s market capitalization has increased by more than $80 billion since the start of the year, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.

The firm expects to double HBM sales for the full year compared to 2024, and for demand from AI to continue to grow into 2026.

LONDON — It’s been a busy week for the European technology sector.

On Tuesday, London-headquartered artificial intelligence startup ElevenLabs announced it would let employees sell shares in a secondary round that doubles its valuation to $6.6 billion.

Then, Dutch chip firm ASML on Wednesday confirmed it was leading French AI firm Mistral’s 1.7 billion-euro Series C funding round at a valuation of 11.7 billion euros ($13.7 billion) — up from 5.8 billion euros last year. Mistral is considered a competitor to the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.

To cap it off, Swedish fintech firm Klarna on Thursday debuted on the New York Stock Exchange after a long-awaited initial public offering. Klarna shares ended the day at $45.82, giving it a market value of over $17 billion.

These developments have revived hopes that Europe is capable of developing a tech industry that can compete with the U.S. and Asia. For the past decade, investors have been talking up Europe’s potential to build valuable tech firms, rebuffing the idea that Silicon Valley is the only place to create innovative new ventures.

However, dreams of a “golden era” of European tech never quite came to fruition.

A key curveball came in the form of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which caused inflation to soar and global central banks to hike interest rates as a result. Higher rates are considered bad for capital-intensive tech firms, which often need to raise cash to grow.

Ironically, that same year, Klarna — which at one point was valued as much as $45.6 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank — had its market value slashed 85% to $6.7 billion.

Now, Europe’s venture capital investors view the recent buzz around the region’s tech firms as less of a renaissance and more of a “growing wave.”

“This started 25 years ago when we saw the first signs of a European tech ecosystem inspired by the original dotcom boom that was very much a Silicon Valley affair,” Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton Capital, told CNBC.

Balderton has backed a number of notable European tech names including fintech firm Revolut and self-driving vehicle tech developer Wayve.

“There have been temporary setbacks: the 2008 financial crisis, the post-Covid tech slump, but the ecosystem has bounced back stronger each time,” Chandratillake said.

“Right now, the confluence of a huge new technological opportunity in the form of generative AI, as well as a community that has done it before and has access to the capital required, is, unsurprisingly, yielding a huge number of sector-defining companies,” he added.

For one, there’s a clear discount on European tech right now. Venture firm Atomico’s annual “State of European Tech” report last year pegged the value of the European tech ecosystem at $3 trillion and predicted it will reach $8 trillion by 2034. Compare that to the story in the U.S., where the tech sector’s biggest megacap stocks combined are worth over $20 trillion.

“Ten years ago, there wasn’t a single European startup valued at over $50 billion; today, there are several,” Jan Hammer, partner at Index Ventures, which has backed the likes of Revolut and Adyen, told CNBC.

“Tens of thousands of people now have firsthand experience building and scaling global companies from companies such as Revolut, Alan, Mistral and Adyen,” Hammer added. “Crucially, European startups are no longer simply expanding abroad — they are born global from day one.”

Amy Nauikoas, founder and CEO of fintech investor Anthemis, suggested that investors may be viewing Europe as something of a safe haven market amid heightened geopolitical risks and macroeconomic uncertainty.

“This is an investing opportunity for sure,” Nauikoas told CNBC. “Macroeconomic dislocation always favors early-stage entrepreneurial disruption and innovation.”

“This time around, trends in family office, capital shifts … and the general constipation of the U.S. institutional allocation market suggest that there should be a lot more money flowing from … global investors to U.K. [and] European private markets.”

Several tech entrepreneurs and investors have backed a new initiative called “EU Inc.” Launched last year, its aim is to boost the European Union’s tech sector via the formation of a “28th regime” — a proposed pan-European legal framework to simplify the complex regulations across various individual EU member states.

“Europe is in a bad headspace at the moment for quite obvious reasons, but I don’t think a lot of the founders who are there really are,” Bede Moore, chief commercial officer of early-stage investment firm Antler, told CNBC.

“At best, what you can say is that there’s this secondary tailwind, which is that people are feeling galvanized by the need for Europe to … be a bit more self-standing.”

WATCH: CNBC interviews Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski

Gemini Space Station, the crypto company founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, priced its initial public offering at $28 per share late Thursday, according to Bloomberg.

A person familiar with the offering told the news service that the company priced the offering above its expected range of $24 to $26, which would value the company at $3.3 billion.

Since Gemini capped the value of the offering at $425 million, 15.2 million shares were sold, according to the report. That was a measure of high demand for the crypto company, which had initially marketed 16.67 million shares. Earlier this week, it increased its proposed price range from between $17 and $19 apiece.

A Gemini spokesperson could not confirm the report.

The company and the selling stockholders granted its underwriters — led by and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley — a 30-day option to sell an additional 452,807 and 380,526 shares, respectively, per the registration form. Gemini stock will trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “GEMI.”

Up to 30% of the shares offered will be reserved for retail investors through Robinhood, SoFi, Hong Kong-based Futu Securities, Singapore’s Moomoo Financial, Webull and other platforms.

Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and holds more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July.

Initial trading will give the market a sense of how long it can keep the crypto IPO party going. Circle Internet and Bullish had successful listings, but there has been a recent consolidation in the prices of blue chip cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether. Also, in contrast to those companies’ profitability, Gemini has reported widening losses, especially in 2025. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.

This week, however, Gemini received a big vote of institutional confidence when Nasdaq said it’s making a strategic investment of $50 million in the crypto company. Nasdaq is seeking to offer its clients access to Gemini’s custodial services, and gain a distribution partner for its trade management system known as Calypso.

Gemini also offers a crypto-backed credit card, and last month, launched another card in partnership with Ripple. The latter garnered more than 30,000 credit card sign-ups in August, a new monthly high that was more than twice the number of credit card sign-ups in the prior month, according to the S-1 filing.

(Learn the best 2026 strategies from inside the NYSE with Josh Brown and others at CNBC PRO Live. Tickets and info here.)