The South Korean chipmaker's first US manufacturing site will package next-generation AI memory chips, backed by nearly $1B in federal support
SK Hynix broke ground on a sprawling semiconductor facility in West Lafayette, Indiana on August 27, marking the company’s first manufacturing footprint on American soil. The project, now valued at over $4 billion, will focus on packaging high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips designed specifically for artificial intelligence workloads.
It’s the largest single development project in Indiana’s history. And it’s being built, quite literally, in Purdue University’s backyard.
What SK Hynix is building #
The facility sits on a 133.5-acre site at Purdue Research Park, where foundation and piling work has been underway since early 2026. The groundbreaking ceremony formalized what construction crews have been doing for months.
Cleanroom operations, where the actual chip packaging will happen, are expected to come online in the second half of 2028.
SK Hynix isn’t fabricating raw silicon wafers in Indiana. Instead, the facility will take memory chips and stack them into the dense, high-performance modules that AI processors need to function.
SK Hynix held a 58% share of the global HBM market by revenue in Q1 2026, according to Counterpoint Research.
Follow the money (and the customers) #
When SK Hynix first announced the Indiana plans in 2024, the investment was pegged at $3.87 billion. It now sits above $4 billion.
Under the CHIPS and Science Act, SK Hynix secured up to $458 million in direct grants and $500 million in loans, finalized in December 2024.
Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google are among SK Hynix’s biggest HBM buyers, and all three are headquartered in the US. SK Hynix is simultaneously expanding capacity in South Korea, but the Indiana site gives it geographic diversification that didn’t exist before.
The project is expected to create approximately 7,000 direct and indirect jobs. SK Hynix has been developing a collaboration pipeline with Purdue University to build a local talent base in semiconductor engineering.
The broader semiconductor chess match #
The CHIPS Act has attracted tens of billions of dollars in commitments from chipmakers including TSMC, Samsung, and Intel, all building or expanding US facilities.
Samsung has been investing heavily to close the HBM gap, and Micron, the only US-headquartered major memory maker, has its own HBM ambitions.
For Indiana, a $4 billion facility and 7,000 jobs would reshape the local economy around West Lafayette, creating a semiconductor ecosystem where none existed before. Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our