Microsoft signs exclusive HBM3e RAM agreement with SK Hynix

Microsoft signed an agreement with South Korean hardware manufacturer SK Hynix last Tuesday. Under the agreement, SK Hynix will become the exclusive supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for Microsoft's next-generation AI accelerators.

 

This agreement focuses on supplying HBM3e modules for Microsoft's latest AI accelerator, the Maia 200. Sources indicate that each Maia 200 processor will be equipped with up to six of these high-performance memory modules. The hardware is designed to handle extremely heavy workloads and is said to have a power consumption of up to approximately 750W.

Microsoft only announced the Maia 200, its second-generation AI accelerator specializing in inference tasks, two days ago. This chip is manufactured using TSMC's 3nm process and integrates native FP8/FP4 tensor cores. The Maia 200 supports a total of 216GB of HBM3e memory with a bandwidth of 7 TB/s, along with 272MB of integrated SRAM. With the newly announced agreement, it is now clear who will supply the HBM3e modules for this processor.

SK Hynix is ​​currently one of the world's largest RAM manufacturers and holds over 90% of the global HBM3e market share. The deal with Microsoft immediately had a positive impact on the company's stock price on the South Korean stock exchange, rising by approximately 8% and pushing its market capitalization close to $400 billion.

While both Microsoft and SK Hynix clearly benefited from this lucrative deal, consumers are witnessing a different market trend that offers little hope for cheaper hardware in the near future. Many memory manufacturers have closed or significantly scaled back their consumer RAM businesses to focus resources on producing chips for the data centers of major AI companies. Demand for enterprise hardware is currently so high that even manufacturers are struggling to meet it.

SK Hynix itself has completely shut down its consumer-grade RAM manufacturing facilities, focusing instead on supplying hardware for data centers. This trend is becoming even more pronounced as the AI ​​race is predicted to reach its peak in 2026. NVIDIA and Samsung are building their own 'AI factories' with over 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs, while Meta is also signing fiber optic agreements with Corning to support its AI infrastructure.

With large corporations continuously benefiting from exclusive deals with each other, the average consumer seems to have no choice but to keep saving up for… a new RAM stick.