Samsung, SK Hynix mega South Korea chips gamble tests optimism of AI cycle

SEOUL: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are making one of the biggest bets yet on the artificial intelligence boom with investments worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but the planned capacity buildout is stoking fears of a painful reckoning if AI spending cools. The tech giants won praise – and a deep bow – from President Lee Jae Myung after throwing their weight behind the government’s semiconductor push, in an apparent departure from a previously restrained approach to capacity expansion shaped by decades of painful boom-and-bust cycles in the memory industry.