Overview
- SK Hynix held a formal groundbreaking at Purdue Research Park on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026, marking the start of construction for its West Lafayette advanced packaging and R&D campus.
- The facility is a packaging and research site rather than a wafer fab, with SK Hynix targeting cleanroom operation in the second half of 2028 and a full mass production ramp of HBM, including HBM4E, during 2029.
- The U.S. government finalized CHIPS Act support for the project that includes about $458 million in grants and up to $500 million in loans, and the company expects roughly 7,000 direct and indirect jobs with about 1,000 permanent on-site roles once operational.
- Indiana will receive DRAM dies shipped from SK Hynix’s overseas fabs to be stacked and assembled into high-bandwidth memory modules, a process that raises data throughput for AI accelerators and relieves a key bottleneck for cloud data centers.
- The Indiana hub is part of SK Hynix’s far larger global expansion plan driven by surging AI demand, backed by a recent $26.5 billion Nasdaq raise and long-term customer deals, but investors and analysts warn of execution, timing and potential oversupply risks.