SK Hynix is telling Silicon Valley the AI boom still runs on memory, and it intends to keep that seat. CEO Kwak Noh-jung spoke on Sept. 18 at its 2026 Global Forum in Santa Clara. He said there is no AI industry without memory, and that the next products after HBM will open the next door. He pointed to more factories and labs, not just better stacks. Yongin in Korea. The Indiana packaging site. A new global AI R&D center in the US. Demand for AI memory will stay high, he said, and those sites are how it plans to hold the lead. The panel was more specific. Design, process, packaging, and the full system now have to move together. A faster stack that the rack cannot feed is still a bottleneck. Roundtables split into silicon design, process and devices, advanced package, and AI systems. $SKHY