On July 29 (Wednesday), SK Hynix unveiled its earnings report, revealing a staggering 557% year-on-year leap in operating profit for the second quarter, hitting a record KRW 60.5 trillion (around USD 41.62 billion). This surge was fueled by a spike in demand for cutting-edge memory chips, as tech behemoths amped up their investments in AI data centers. Yet, the figure fell short of the market's anticipated KRW 64 trillion. The primary reason was SK Hynix's heavy reliance on high-end memory chips (HBM), which hindered it from fully capitalizing on the price hikes of traditional memory chips, thus igniting market fears of a slowdown in the AI craze. Concurrently, SK Hynix's revenue for the second quarter stood at KRW 79 trillion, also missing the market's forecast of KRW 84 trillion. The earnings report dealt a blow to SK Hynix, with its U.S.-listed shares closing 9% lower on Tuesday and plummeting a further 9% in after-hours trading. Western Digital and Micron Technology also saw their shares slide more than 4%, wiping out the gains spurred by Seagate Technology's earnings report.