Samsung, SK Hynix Test Chinese Chip Tools to Hedge Against US Export Controls

Two years ago, when the future of American chipmaking equipment in China grew suddenly uncertain, Samsung and SK Hynix made a quiet decision. They began testing etching machines built by Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment, a Shanghai-based company, at their factories across China. The move was not about expansion or innovation. It was insurance.

The two South Korean memory chipmakers operate some of the world's most sophisticated semiconductor plants on Chinese soil—Samsung's NAND flash facility in Xian, SK Hynix's NAND plants in Dalian and its DRAM factory in Wuxi. These operations have long depended on equipment from American giants like Applied Materials and Lam Research. But Washington's appetite for controlling what technology flows into China has been growing, and the companies wanted to know: if the rules tightened further, could they keep their Chinese factories running with Chinese-made tools instead?

The timing of those tests was not accidental. In 2023, the U.S. Commerce Department had granted Samsung and SK Hynix special status as "validated end users," allowing them to import certain controlled equipment without individual licenses. That permission lasted two years. In 2025, Washington revoked it entirely. The companies were later granted an annual license for 2026, but the message was clear: the ground beneath them was shifting. What worried them most was not the ban on new equipment, but the possibility that future restrictions might extend to servicing, repairing, or replacing the American tools already installed in their Chinese plants. If that happened, their factories could grind to a halt.

Samsung and SK Hynix have not publicly committed to deploying Chinese equipment at scale. Samsung explicitly denied to Reuters that it had tested AMEC machines at all. SK Hynix declined to comment. But three people with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed the evaluations were real and ongoing. The companies, these sources said, were keeping Chinese suppliers in reserve—not to expand production in China, but to maintain and upgrade the lines they already had.

For AMEC and China's emerging semiconductor equipment industry, this moment represents something rare: a chance to prove themselves to the world's best chipmakers. Chinese equipment makers have spent years closing the gap with Western rivals in areas like etching, deposition, cleaning, and planarization. They often undercut established suppliers by 20 to 30 percent. AMEC's machines are already in use at leading Chinese chipmakers like Yangtze Memory Technologies, which gave Samsung and SK Hynix reason to believe the equipment was mature enough to test. A breakthrough endorsement from either company would carry enormous weight in the global market.

What is unfolding is a paradox embedded in American export controls themselves. Measures designed to constrain China's semiconductor ambitions are inadvertently creating openings for Chinese rivals to gain footholds inside foreign-owned factories operating in China. Deutsche Bank estimates that four Chinese equipment makers—Naura Technology, AMEC, Piotech, and ACM Research—will each generate more than a billion dollars in revenue in 2026. Together, they could capture 25 to 30 percent of China's projected 28 billion dollar wafer-fabrication equipment market. Excluding lithography and metrology, where Chinese companies still lag significantly, their share could approach 40 percent.

The established suppliers—Applied Materials, Lam Research, KLA, and their Japanese and European counterparts—have dominated wafer fabrication for decades. Applied Materials alone reported 8.53 billion dollars in China revenue in fiscal 2025, representing 30 percent of its total sales. A sustained shift toward Chinese equipment would reshape that landscape. Yet significant hurdles remain. Chinese tools still require lengthy qualification processes, have smaller service networks, face intellectual-property concerns, and could draw political pressure from Washington. It is also unclear whether Korean chipmakers would risk installing Chinese equipment at their domestic factories, where security and intellectual-property protection are paramount.

For now, Samsung and SK Hynix are hedging. They are not abandoning American suppliers. They are simply preparing for a world in which they might have to. The tests continue quietly. No major deployment decisions have been made. But the door has opened, and Chinese equipment makers are watching closely to see if it stays open.