SK Group Chairman Sees Demand Spike, But Have You Checked Capacity?

The numbers Chey Tae-won dropped at the Jeju Forum sound like a shot in the arm for the entire semiconductor industry. Demand growth in AI is 60% to 100%, overall semiconductor demand is growing by at least 50% to 60%, while new supply additions are nearly zero. This supply-demand scissors gap looks perfect on paper—prices skyrocketing, profits soaring, and all players making money blindfolded. But the problem is, real-world supply and demand relationships are never linear extrapolation arithmetic problems; they are complex networks filled with friction and reflexivity.