It’s no secret that the US administration, under President Trump, has been keen to get foreign chip manufacturing migrated closer to home. There are also benefits for Taiwanese and Korean chipmakers manufacturing in the US; of course, the least of which is avoiding the threat of tariffs. And now it seems SK hynix could be considering joining the likes of Samsung and TSMC by setting up shop to make chips on US soil.
Specifically, this could be thanks to talks with Intel, Reuters says, according to “three people familiar with the discussions.” This would either mean leasing some of Intel’s planned Ohio fab or forming a joint venture with the company and cloud firms.
This latter option is one that analyst Jukan reckons is the more important detail here: “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.”
If it did come in the form of a joint venture, it could bode well for both Intel and SK, as there would be shared risk and an entire shared infrastructure.
It’s not the first we’ve heard of this, as only a couple of weeks ago there were reports that SK could be considering using Intel Foundry to produce its base dies. Now there’s just a lot more credence to these rumours, even if they are indeed still just rumours. It’s also worth noting that SK hynix already has some production set up in the US, but that’s just for packaging, not actual wafer production, and it only recently broke ground. The potential Intel-SK deal the latest rumours refer to would be for making actual chips.
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.September 16, 2026
As Reuters notes, Intel hasn’t had the easiest time of it over the past couple of years, so any kind of deal could relieve some pressure on the chip giant. The company, remember, was struggling to the extent that it gave the US government a 10% stake last year.
Saying that, the company has been seeing the tides turn over the past few months and has been keen to highlight that positivity in its earnings reports. And after news of this possible Intel-SK deal seeped out, its share price has jumped up—though not to anything more than a small spike compared to the entire past 6-month period. The same goes for SK hynix.
There could also be pressure against SK starting manufacturing in the US, as Seoul is unlikely to want the company to move in that direction. Though if SK hynix does use Intel fabs for its production, it won’t have to invest a ton of physical capital into it, which might stave off concerns about moving too far away from Korea for its production.