TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s imports of memory chips manufactured in South Korea skyrocketed 225% year over year in the first half of 2024, due to demand for high-performance bandwidth memory (HBM) products for AI computing. 

In the first six months of 2024, US$4.26 billion (NT$138.27 billion) worth of HBM chip exports to Taiwan were reported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, and the Korea International Trade Association, per the Korea Times. Taiwan is now the third largest purchaser of Korean memory chip products globally. 

South Korea’s chip exports grew by 88.7% compared to the first half of 2023. However, the massive spike in exports to Taiwan is thanks to SK Hynix, the exclusive South Korean supplier of HBM products to Nvidia for AI accelerators, which are packaged in Taiwan by TSMC.

According to reports, SK Hynix expects its total profits in 2024 to eclipse 2023 revenue by nearly 300%. For the past decade, South Korea’s total chip exports to Taiwan fluctuated between US$1 billion and US$4 billion annually, but in 2024, that number is expected to surpass US$8 billion (NT$260 billion), per the Korea Herald.