South Korea's chip drive weighs Samsung and SK Hynix

(Sharecast News) - Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix traded lower on Monday after South Korea unveiled sweeping artificialintelligence and semiconductor investment plans expected to draw hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung announced a national strategy to reinforce the country's leadership in semiconductors and expand AI infrastructure through largescale investment and new manufacturing capacity, saying the Asian nation must move faster than global rivals to secure the technologies underpinning the AI era.

Under the plan, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will each build two new fabrication plants in the country's southwest as part of an KRW 800tr (�393bn) national semiconductor ecosystem project.

"We will rapidly expand our production capacity by drastically shortening the timeline from licensing to construction," said JungKwan Kim, South Korea's minister of trade, industry and resources.

The announcement followed a report in the Maeil Business Newspaper on Friday that Samsung Group was preparing a KRW 1,000tr (�491bn) investment blueprint spanning the next decade. The report said the programme would cover semiconductor fabs, AI data centres, advanced packaging, batteries and displays.

Samsung and SK Hynix have become central players in the AI boom, with demand for highbandwidth memory chips outstripping supply as cloud providers and tech firms race to expand infrastructure.

At the close, Samsung shares were down 4.76% at KRW 323,000 each, while SK Hynix shares were 1.68% softer at KRW 2,628,000 each.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com