SK Hynix will take over entire NAND business of Intel for 10.3 trillion won ($9 billion). SK Hynix has signed a contract to acquire NAND, a memory business unit of Intel, for $9 billion, the company said on Oct. 20.
Regarding this matter, SK Hynix also finished the voting of its board of directors in the morning of Oct. 20.
The acquisition sector is Intel's entire SSD business division, including NAND single-product and wafer business, and China's Dalian production facility. Intel's Optane division, the next-generation memory sector, was excluded from the acquisition.
Intel, which specializes in semiconductor central processing unit (CPU), has been pushing to clean up its memory business, which is non-mainstream and relatively uncompetitive.
This amount is expected to be the largest one in domestic M&A history, surpassing Samsung Electronics' $8 billion acquisition of Harman in 2016.
SK Hynix’s takeover of Intel's NAND business is designed to strengthen its competitive edge in the memory semiconductor sector to form a balanced portfolio from DRAM to NAND.
Currently, SK Hynix ranks second in DRAM after Samsung, but in the NAND sector, it ranks fifth in the global market.
According to Omdia, a market research firm, Samsung topped the NAND market with 35.9 percent as of the end of last year, with SK Hynix accounting for 9.9 percent and Intel accounting for 9.5 percent.
When SK Hynix completes its acquisition of Intel, its market share in the NAND market will reach about 20 percent, surpassing Kioxia (19 percent) to become the second-largest global player after Samsung.