Cloud buyers surface as possible co-owners in SK Hynix's Intel Ohio talks

The venture option is the one that would change a capacity plan, and it is the one with the least on the record. One of the two scenarios reported has Intel and SK Hynix forming a venture with major cloud companies seeking to secure memory supplies ^[3]. The analyst Jukan, quoted by PC Gamer, said: "Not many people are paying attention, but what matters in the Hynix and Intel news is that Hynix and Intel could form a JV with hyperscalers hungry for memory supply. That's more important than the Hynix and Intel news itself." ^[19]

The difference between the two scenarios is the difference between a contract and a stake. Under a lease, SK Hynix runs its own wafers in Intel's building and sells them ^[2]. A venture would put a buyer on the ownership side of the same wafers. No size, cost or timeline for a deal has been reported, and the type of memory Ohio would make has not been identified ^[13].

Then the dates. Intel said in 2022 that it could invest up to $100 billion in Ohio, with production beginning in 2025 ^[8]. The plants are now due for completion in 2030 and 2031, five and six years after that original start ^[9][22]. SK Hynix's packaging plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, costs more than $4 billion and reaches mass production in the second half of 2029, taking DRAM wafers made in South Korea and packaging them into high-bandwidth memory ^[10]. Ohio wafers would arrive at least a year after that Indiana line is running ^[23]. Wafer fabrication is a step SK Hynix does not currently perform in the United States, where Micron is the only one of the largest memory makers producing silicon wafers ^[11].

Cost points away from Ohio. Two people familiar with the discussions said manufacturing in the United States costs much more than in South Korea, with one citing higher labor and construction costs and a chip supply chain still concentrated in Asia ^[12]. Trade policy points the other way. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has threatened tariffs of up to 100% on South Korean and Taiwanese chipmakers that do not expand American production ^[17], and two of the people said Seoul wants to use any SK Hynix investment as a bargaining chip in the negotiation over the $200 billion of its 2025 pledge that remains undecided, while Washington presses the company to commit quickly ^[15][16].

SK Hynix filed a Form 6-K on July 22 saying it "has not pursued, or made any determination regarding, an acquisition" of the Ohio land and fabrication plant ^[5]. It said of the August 31 reports about HBM4E base-die production at Intel Foundry that "some of the reports are not true" ^[6]. Intel declined to comment on what it called speculation and said it continued to invest in preparing the site ^[7]. Both share prices moved only slightly on the news ^[21]. The denials are narrow, though: the 6-K addressed an acquisition, not a lease, and SK Hynix said the same day as the Reuters report that it was considering additional production bases ^[4].

Two governments are already involved in this counterparty. South Korea's trade ministry said the production decision belongs to SK Hynix, but that any plan involving national core technology would face review under the Industrial Technology Protection Act ^[14]. Intel gave the US government a 10% stake last year ^[20]. A cloud company taking equity in Ohio memory capacity would be buying into both of those.