The recent disclosures of cooperation between Nvidia, SK Hynix, Broadcom, and Samsung indicate that the resource competition among AI chip companies has extended from advanced process nodes to HBM, advanced packaging, and system-level delivery.

The cooperation between SK Hynix and Nvidia covers long-term technology development and stable supply for next-generation AI storage, including the planned launch of the 2GW Vera Rubin DSX AI Factory in 2027. The memorandum of understanding signed between Samsung and Broadcom covers storage, HBM, 2nm and below wafer foundry services, as well as 2.3D and 2.5D advanced packaging for AI and network chips.

In the past, storage was merely a supporting link in the chip supply chain; now, leading AI chip manufacturers are intervening early in product definition, technology validation, and capacity allocation. Procurement targets are no longer limited to specific generations of HBM but extend to storage, logic chip manufacturing, advanced packaging, and data center deployment.

The delivery bottleneck for AI chips is no longer determined solely by advanced process nodes. After GPUs or ASICs complete tape-out, they still need to be matched with HBM, advanced packaging, substrates, and thermal resources. HBM specifications, stacking layers, power consumption, and packaging architectures are highly coupled; any yield or capacity issues in any link could slow down the shipment of the entire system.

This is also why "long-term technology development" is more critical than "stable supply" in the cooperation between Nvidia and SK Hynix. HBM manufacturers need to participate in specification design and validation before mass production, shifting customer relationships from simple procurement to joint development. For suppliers, this means higher customer stickiness, clearer order visibility, and more justified capital expenditures.

The benefit paths for SK Hynix and Samsung differ. SK Hynix's core advantage lies in its HBM capabilities and its binding with Nvidia, resulting in a more direct benefit chain and higher earnings certainty. Samsung's potential benefits are broader, with cooperation involving storage, wafer foundry, and advanced packaging; theoretically, it can upgrade from a storage supplier to an integrated AI ASIC manufacturing platform. However, whether this logic materializes depends on HBM certification, 2nm yields, and whether the Cube series packaging can enter mass production.

For TSMC, the short-term impact is limited. Broadcom's introduction of Samsung is closer to adding a second source rather than a large-scale migration of core orders. TSMC's advanced process and CoWoS capacities still have significant demand backlogs; even if some share flows to Samsung, the released capacity may be quickly filled by other customers.

The core change reflected in these two cooperations is that storage and advanced packaging have shifted from supporting links to strategic resources for AI system delivery. At this stage, SK Hynix corresponds to higher certainty, Samsung to greater elasticity, and TSMC has not yet shown clear fundamental pressure.