South Korea’s chipmaker to buy Intel's NAND memory unit

South Korean giant chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. on Tuesday announced it will buy NAND memory unit business of the US semiconductor giant Intel Corp.

SK Hynix Inc. is the country’s second top chipmaker.

The deal between the South Korea and US businesses, when sealed, would be the country’s largest acquisition by any Korean company at around $9 billion, Yonhap news agency reported.

It would make the South Korean company the world's second-largest NAND flash chip producer.

Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed.

According to the deal, SK Hynix will pay the amount until 2025, clearing most of it by 2021.

The South Korean company will acquire all of Intel's NAND flash business, except its Optane memory unit. The deal includes Intel's solid state drive (SSD) business and its factory in Dalian, China.

“I am pleased to see SK Hynix and Intel's NAND division, which have led the NAND flash technology innovation, work to build the new future together,” said Lee Seok-hee, chief executive officer of SK Hynix.

“By taking each other's strengths and technologies, SK Hynix will proactively respond to various needs from customers and optimize our business structure, expanding our innovative portfolio in the NAND flash market segment, which will be comparable with what we achieved in DRAM.”

SK Hynix Inc. broke the earlier record of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.'s deal in 2016 to buy Harman International Industries Inc. for $8 billion.