SK Group Chairman Warns Global Chip Wafer Shortage Will Persist Until 2030 as AI Demand Outstrips Supply

SAN JOSE, California — The head of South Korea's SK Group delivered one of the starkest warnings yet about the global semiconductor supply chain on Monday, telling reporters at Nvidia's GTC conference that the worldwide shortage of chip wafers is unlikely to ease before 2030.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, whose conglomerate controls SK Hynix — the world's largest supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips — said demand fueled by artificial intelligence continues to overwhelm the industry's ability to produce enough silicon wafers SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. The remarks came on the sidelines of the annual gathering in San Jose, California, where chipmakers, cloud providers and AI developers converge to map the future of computing hardware.

A Deficit Measured in Years, Not Quarters

Chey framed the shortage not as a temporary dip but as a structural gap that will take years to close. He estimated the current wafer supply deficit exceeds 20 percent and said it will take at least four to five years to build enough new capacity to meet demand SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. That timeline pushes any meaningful relief into 2030 at the earliest — a horizon far beyond the cyclical swings the memory industry has historically experienced.

The bottleneck traces directly to the explosive growth in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the specialized chips that power AI training clusters and inference servers. Chey explained that manufacturing HBM requires far more wafer material than conventional memory products, compounding the supply pressure SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. SK Hynix commands a 57 percent share of the global HBM market and holds 32 percent of overall DRAM production, making it the second-largest DRAM producer worldwide according to industry tracker Counterpoint SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply..

As the dominant HBM supplier to Nvidia — whose graphics processors underpin the vast majority of AI training infrastructure globally — SK Hynix sits at the epicenter of the shortage. Every new generation of Nvidia accelerators demands more memory bandwidth and, by extension, more wafers.

DRAM Price Stabilization and a Potential US Listing

Chey signaled that SK Hynix is preparing a strategy to stabilize DRAM chip prices, though he declined to reveal details at the conference. He indicated the company's chief executive would soon announce a new plan addressing pricing stability SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. The comments suggest SK Hynix recognizes that the structural shortage, if left unmanaged, could drive volatility that hurts both producers and the downstream companies that depend on steady memory supply.

In a separate disclosure, Chey said SK Hynix is reviewing a potential listing of American Depositary Receipts in the United States SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. Such a move would broaden the company's shareholder base beyond South Korea, giving American and international institutional investors direct access to one of the most strategically important semiconductor firms in the world. For a company whose products are essential to Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and every other major AI platform operator, a US listing could unlock significant capital market advantages.

Chey also noted that escalating tensions in the Middle East have created difficulties for the group through higher energy prices, prompting SK to explore alternative energy sources SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. Energy costs are a critical factor for semiconductor manufacturing, which requires enormous amounts of electricity and ultra-pure water.

Expansion Plans Focus on South Korea

When asked about expanding manufacturing overseas to ease the shortage, Chey indicated that SK Hynix would focus on building new fabrication facilities in South Korea for the time being. Industry reporting from the conference indicated the chairman cited energy supply and water access as the primary constraints on overseas expansion, rather than funding or government incentives. The remark underscores a reality that chipmakers worldwide are grappling with: building advanced semiconductor factories is no longer primarily a question of capital, but of securing the physical infrastructure to keep them running.

SK Hynix is already investing heavily in domestic capacity. The company's new fabrication complex in Yongin, south of Seoul, represents one of the largest semiconductor construction projects in the world. Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology are pursuing parallel expansions, but industry analysts note that even these combined efforts may not fully close the supply gap within the decade.

Industry Analysts See a Structural Shift

The semiconductor industry has long been characterized by boom-and-bust memory cycles, but several analysts who commented on Chey's remarks this week argued that the current situation represents something fundamentally different. Rather than a cyclical imbalance driven by overbuilding or demand drops, the shortage reflects a permanent reallocation of manufacturing capacity toward AI-specific products.

Memory vendors are increasingly locking in multi-year supply agreements for HBM, committing future production well in advance — a pattern more typical of strategic resource markets than of the historically volatile memory sector. Industry research published earlier this year projected that 2026 DRAM and NAND flash supply growth would come in well below historical averages, as Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron redirect cleanroom space toward higher-margin AI products.

The result is a two-tier market emerging across the enterprise landscape. Hyperscale cloud operators and sovereign AI infrastructure projects can secure supply early through long-term contracts, while mid-market enterprises face delayed access, reduced configuration options and higher costs. For companies planning server refreshes, AI pilots or data center expansions, the message from San Jose this week was sobering: memory constraints are not going away soon, and pricing will reflect that reality.

What Happens Next

SK Hynix shares rose 3.5 percent on Tuesday morning in Seoul following Chey's comments, outpacing the benchmark KOSPI index, which gained 3 percent SK Group chairman says wafer shortage to last until 2030, trying to stabilise memory priceschannelnewsasia.com·SecondaryNVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won attend the NVIDIA GTC global AI conference in San Jose, California, U.S. March 16, 2026. REUTERS/Fred Greaves SAN JOSE, California, March 16 : South Korea's SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said on Monday the global chip wafer shortage is likely to persist until 2030, as demand driven by artificial intelligence continues to outpace supply.. The market reaction suggests investors view the prolonged shortage as favorable for SK Hynix's pricing power, even as it presents headwinds for the broader technology ecosystem.

The coming months will bring two developments worth watching closely. First, the promised DRAM price stabilization plan from SK Hynix's chief executive could reshape expectations across the memory market. Second, any concrete steps toward a US ADR listing would represent a significant strategic shift for a company that has remained primarily listed in Seoul.

For the global technology industry, Chey's warning carries implications that extend well beyond memory chips. If wafer supply remains constrained through 2030, the downstream effects will ripple through server pricing, cloud computing costs, smartphone production and the pace of AI deployment itself. The era of cheap, abundant memory may be over — replaced by a new reality in which access to advanced semiconductor capacity is as much a strategic asset as the software that runs on it.