A senior official announced on Wednesday that SK Hynix, the second-largest memory chip manufacturer in the world, will begin mass producing HBM3E 12-layer chips by the end of this month.
TakeAway Points:
- SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, will start mass production of HBM3E 12-layer chips by the end of this month.
- SK Hynix has been the main supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia and supplied HBM3E chips in late March to a customer it declined to identify.
- Salesforce, an enterprise cloud company, announced on Tuesday that it has decided to buy Tenyx, a company that creates speech assistants with artificial intelligence, in order to expand its AI-powered products.
HBM3E 12-layer chips mass production
Justin Kim, president and head of the company’s AI Infra division, made the comment at the Semicon Taiwan industry forum in Taipei.
In July, the South Korean company disclosed plans to ship the next versions of HBM chips—the 12-layer HBM3E—starting in the fourth quarter and the HBM4 starting in the second half of 2025.
High-bandwidth memory (HBM) is a type of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, standard first produced in 2013, in which chips are vertically stacked to save space and reduce power consumption. They are advanced memory chips capable of handling generative artificial intelligence (AI) work.
A key component of graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI, it helps process massive amounts of data produced by complex applications.
In May, SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said its HBM chips were sold out for this year and almost sold out for 2025.
There are only three main manufacturers of HBM; SK Hynix, Micron, and Samsung Electronics.
SK Hynix has been the main supplier of HBM chips to Nvidia and supplied HBM3E chips in late March to a customer it declined to identify.
Salesforce to buy AI voice agent firm Tenyx
Salesforce, an enterprise cloud company, announced on Tuesday that it has decided to buy Tenyx, a company that creates speech assistants with artificial intelligence, in order to expand its AI-powered products.
The acquisition, for which no deal value was disclosed and is expected to close in the third quarter, will see Tenyx’s co-founders, CEO Itamar Arel and CTO Adam Earle, along with their team, join Salesforce.
Tenyx, a California-based startup founded in 2022, caters to clients across various industries, including e-commerce, healthcare, hospitality, and travel, according to its website.
Last year, Salesforce, under pressure from activist investors, announced plans to double its share buybacks and shift away from acquiring more companies after disbanding its mergers and acquisitions committee.
The San Francisco, California-based company is now looking at acquisitions to re-accelerate its revenue growth.
The move echoes similar deals struck by tech giants Microsoft and Amazon this year, highlighting the increasing competition for AI tools and talent.
Microsoft paid $650 million in March to acquire talent from AI startup Inflection, while Amazon hired several co-founders and employees from Adept, another AI startup, in June.
Salesforce beat Wall Street expectations for second-quarter revenue and profit last week, benefiting from higher spending on its enterprise cloud products.
