SK hynix shares tumble after DeepSeek’s low-cost AI model shakes chip market > 기업

▲SK hynix headquarters at Icheon, Gyeonggi, on Jan. 23.

Shares of SK hynix, a major memory chip supplier to Nvidia, nose-dived on the Kospi bourse Friday as the market reopened for the first time this week, following the release of a low-cost AI model by Chinese startup DeepSeek.

SK hynix shares were trading at 201,000 won ($138.49) as of 10:32 a.m., an 9.05 percent decline from the previous trading session on Jan. 24. Immediately after the market opened, shares fell by as much as 11 percent, briefly dipping below the 200,000-won mark.

The Kospi was closed from Monday to Thursday due to the Lunar New Year holiday.  

On Jan. 20, DeepSeek launched its open-source AI model R1, reportedly cheaper and faster to train with less-advanced chips but functionally competitive with models like GPT-4 and Llama 3.

The successful debut of R1 has raised concerns that demand for high-performance, high-cost chips from Nvidia may decline, affecting SK hynix as a key supplier of high bandwidth memory chips.  

Shares of Samsung Electronics, another Korean chipmaker, slipped 2.42 percent to 52,400 won at 10:32 a.m.