South Korea's ruling party is seeking to ease restrictions so that chipmaker SK Hynix can more easily set up joint ventures with external investors. The move is one of the government's efforts to make Korea an artificial intelligence powerhouse. Members of the Democratic Party of Korea, led by President Lee Jae-myung, proposed amending the current Advanced Technology Strategic Industries Act, which currently prohibits “subsidiaries of subsidiary companies” from making such investments. If the amendment is passed, chipmaker SK Hynix, as a subsidiary of SK Square, will be able to attract external capital for the construction of a new fab as long as it retains at least 50% of the shares in the joint venture. The bill mainly affects SK Hynix, a major developer of high-bandwidth memory used in Nvidia's AI processors.

South Korea's ruling party is seeking to ease restrictions so that chipmaker SK Hynix can more easily set up joint ventures with external investors. The move is one of the government's efforts to make Korea an artificial intelligence powerhouse. Members of the Democratic Party of Korea, led by President Lee Jae-myung, proposed amending the current Advanced Technology Strategic Industries Act, which currently prohibits “subsidiaries of subsidiary companies” from making such investments. If the amendment is passed, chipmaker SK Hynix, as a subsidiary of SK Square, will be able to attract external capital for the construction of a new fab as long as it retains at least 50% of the shares in the joint venture. The bill mainly affects SK Hynix, a major developer of high-bandwidth memory used in Nvidia's AI processors.