但文章强调，这些成就仍不如「记忆体晶片制造商」这个身分对估值的影响。只做记忆体的 SK 海力士，被描述为在「某年 9 月」市值已高到超过三星此前任何时点；两家公司股价在近几周急升。记忆体过去因同质化与供需循环而被视为「苦生意」，如今 AI 建置带来工业级需求，使供给回到平衡可能仍需多年，产线转向高频宽记忆体以搭配 Nvidia 与 AMD 的 AI 加速器，也推升今年消费电子的涨价风险。
AI 端的核心是算力与记忆体配套：业界把算力称为 compute，而加速器往往需要在每个处理单元上绑定「数百 GB」高频宽记忆体；需求被形容为极高。由于新增记忆体产能的边际成本变化不大、但客户愿付价格上升，加上新建晶圆厂无法一夕完成，供给弹性受限。文章同时指出大型投资者坐拥「数千亿美元」现金与等价物（如微软、Meta），短期不易急踩煞车；分析师则警告 AI 基建可能带来通膨与供应链瓶颈，记忆体是最早示警的『煤矿金丝雀』，因此建议电子产品需求宜提早满足。
Samsung built a global brand by pioneering and mass-producing consumer tech: Super AMOLED screens, the Galaxy Note form factor, and a TV business that has ranked No. 1 worldwide for 20 years. It also spent heavily on stunts and sponsorships, and sells everything from earbuds to 130-inch displays and major home appliances.
The piece argues that none of that matters as much to valuation as Samsung’s role in memory chips. SK Hynix, focused almost exclusively on memory, is described as surpassing Samsung’s prior peak valuation by September (year unspecified), with both stocks surging in recent weeks. Memory used to be a commoditized, boom-bust business; AI has shifted demand to industrial scale, likely delaying any return to balanced supply, and pushing production toward high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia and AMD accelerators—raising the odds of higher consumer-electronics prices this year.
AI hardware growth is constrained by compute and memory together: accelerators strap hundreds of gigabytes of high-bandwidth memory to each unit, and executives describe demand as extremely high. With marginal production costs not rising much but pricing power improving—and with new fabs slow to build—prices can jump. Big spenders reportedly hold hundreds of billions in cash and equivalents, so plans may persist, even as analysts warn of inflationary bottlenecks; memory is framed as the “canary in the coal mine,” implying consumers may want to buy electronics sooner.
