AI chip boom redraws global tech map, with China conspicuously absent

AI热潮重绘全球技术力量版图，中国明显缺席

Nvidia's AI boom is making SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron extremely rich. The most advanced memory chips come only from these three—none from China. Huang wrote "Please produce more :)" on a Hynix wafer at Computex because supply can't keep up. Memory prices more than doubled this year. Samsung and SK Hynix made South Korea the first country outside the US with two trillion-dollar companies. US tariffs and tech restrictions locked China out of this boom more effectively than subsidies ever did. The supply chain now sits almost entirely in Taiwan and South Korea, two geopolitical flashpoints.

Why it matters: NYT uses the memory supply chain as a lens—doubled wafer prices, two trillion-dollar Korean companies, and a Jensen Huang anecdote—to explain the AI hardware bottleneck. It's a trend piece rather than event-driven news, so it lands at the featured threshold.