SK hynix holds '2026 Future Forum' on Tuesday
'We must look again at things we take for granted, through the eyes of customers and partners'
Anthropic, TSMC join as speakers from 'AI partners'
Rebellions, Hyperaccel among domestic fabless startups attending
Future memory solutions also discussed... 3D technology emerges as answer
SK hynix said Wednesday it held its "2026 Future Forum" to share new trends and insights on its AI transformation, or AX, project. At the event, CEO Kwak Noh-jung called for finding new business opportunities through the eyes of customers and partners.
The 2026 Future Forum, held Tuesday at the Supex Center on the company's Icheon campus, was organized around the theme "The Golden Time of the AI Era: Now Is When AI Memory Solution Creators Change the World." Key executives, industry figures from Korea and abroad, and professors from major universities took part as speakers.
The Future Forum was established to define the direction SK hynix should take in the fast-changing AI era and to sharpen employees' insight. This year's forum examined an AI era in which work and the business environment are shifting and the boundaries between business and technology are dissolving. It focused in particular on what the company should do and how memory chips should evolve.
In his opening remarks, Kwak said, "Let us shift our perspective 'outside-in' and look again, through the eyes of our customers and partners, at things we have long taken for granted," adding that the company should "seek out possibilities we have not yet seen amid the changes in the AI ecosystem."
He then likened the memory market's past to "a straight road where companies competed on who could run faster," saying the market now resembles "a winding road that keeps changing by the moment." He urged employees to build not only internal capabilities but also the speed and flexibility to grasp the pace and direction of external change and adapt accordingly.
True to Kwak's remarks, the forum drew attention for bringing together key executives and representatives from numerous partner companies. Speakers and panelists from Anthropic, the developer of the generative AI model Claude, and from TSMC shared their views on the AI era. Domestic AI startups were also represented, including Rebellions CEO Park Sung-hyun, Hyperaccel CEO Kim Joo-young and Squeezebits CEO Kim Hyung-jun.
Tariq Sahipar, Anthropic's head of product, gave a talk titled "Collaboration Between Humans and AI: How Will Our Work Change?" He explained how AI is transforming work based on real-world usage data from Claude, and outlined trends in AI adoption among global companies and their implications for the semiconductor industry.
"The semiconductor industry, too, can build a 'software factory' that applies AI to tasks such as circuit simulation, power measurement and system optimization," Sahipar said. "It is important to establish a system in which AI can verify its own results."
The event also included discussions on future memory solutions as AI advances further. Yoon Sung-roh, a professor at Seoul National University, said, "As AI workloads evolve into the age of AI agents, the role of memory is changing as well." He predicted that "designing a memory hierarchy tailored to the characteristics of each workload will become a key source of competitiveness for future AI systems."
In response, Lim Eui-cheol, SK hynix vice president in charge of Solution AT, introduced the company's "full-stack AI memory" strategy. He said SK hynix is preparing a range of memory products tailored to different workloads. These include 3D stacked DRAM, HBM (high bandwidth memory) and HBF (high bandwidth NAND flash).
Discussions between internal and external experts on 3D memory, seen as a future memory technology, took place alongside the forum. Analysts noted that device miniaturization is nearing its limits, while data movement between systems and memory consumes increasing time and power. As a result, the shift toward 3D memory has become inevitable.
SK hynix Vice Presidents Kim Kyung-hoon and Son Ho-young divided 3D technology into two categories. One is device integration, which stacks devices vertically; the other is heterogeneous integration, which combines chips with different characteristics into one. They presented three key technology directions: maximizing data bus width, achieving ultra-short-reach transmission, and utilizing logic foundry processes for DRAM's peripheral circuitry.
SK hynix plans to repackage the insights gained from the Future Forum into learning content for employees and share it internally. It will link the content to each division's tasks to drive follow-up action. Through this, the company aims to respond promptly during the AI era's golden window and to strengthen its foundation for becoming a full-stack AI memory creator.
jeongwan@heraldcorp.com
