The country’s two major semiconductor manufacturers, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, are making contrasting moves on the benchmark KOSPI.A market bellwether, Samsung Electronics has been closing in the range between 75,000 won ($55) to 79,000 won since last week. On Monday, it ended at 77,200 won, gaining 1.71 percent from the previous session last Friday.The price range was lower than 86,000 won, which came during intraday trading in April and marked the highest level in the past 12 months.Meanwhile, SK hynix has been closing in the range between 190,000 won and 210,000 won since last week, including Monday, when it advanced 1.46 percent from Friday to end at 201,500 won.

In particular, the country’s No. 1 chipmaker surpassed the 200,000 won level for the first time last week. During intraday trading on Thursday, it even climbed to 204,000 won to reach a 12-month high.Analysts assessed the contrast between the two companies was due to SK hynix’s supply of high-end memory chips to Nvidia, a U.S. company specializing in artificial intelligence (AI)-related chips.Samsung Electronics, on the other hand, is not a supplier for Nvidia, which controls a whopping 95 percent of the AI chip market.“Under the circumstances, SK hynix is expected to outpace Samsung Electronics for the time being,” an industry source said, pointing out Nvidia posted a profit of $14.88 billion for the January-March period, up 629 percent compared to the corresponding quarter in 2023.Nvidia is larger than Tesla and Amazon combined and is also larger than the 스포츠토토존 entire German stock market.