Seoul: South Korean chip giant SK Hynix has reported its best quarterly profit in six years, thanks to explosive global demand for artificial intelligence , but its shares tumbled with other tech firms following a hefty sell-off on Wall Street.

The world’s second-largest memory chip maker dominates the market for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors and is a key supplier for Nvidia, which controls about 80% of the global AI chip market.

SK Hynix posted an operating profit of 5.47 trillion won (US$3.96bil) in April-June, its third consecutive quarterly profit after losses last year.

Net profit jumped 115% on-year to 4.12 trillion won and revenue surged 125% to 16.42 trillion won - a record quarterly high.

The company said “the continuous rise in overall prices of products with strong demand for AI memories including HBM led to 32% increase in revenues compared to the previous quarter”.

 - AFP