A close-up of a semiconductor wafer.
Christoph Schmidt/picture alliance via Getty ImagesThis story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Korea’s Richest 2024. See the full list here.
The artificial intelligence boom lifted a range of companies across the semiconductor supply chain, from chip designers such as Nvidia to contract manufacturers like TSMC. It even boosted shares of obscure companies like South Korean equipment maker Hanmi Semiconductor and made its CEO Kwak Dong Shin a billionaire last year. Now another little-known semiconductor company in South Korea has seen its shares surge in recent months, propelling its founder Chung Ji-wan to the Korea’s 50 Richest list for the first time.
Based in Seongnam, south of Seoul, Chung’s 2.4 trillion won ($1.7 billion) market cap company, Soulbrain, makes chemicals needed in the semiconductor-manufacturing process. Soulbrain’s rise also boosted shares of its 1.2 trillion won market cap holding company, Soulbrain Holdings.
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Chung, together with his wife Yim Hyea-ok and their daughter Moon-ju, owns a combined 10% stake in Soulbrain and a 73% holding in Soulbrain Holdings. The two companies make up the bulk of the 67-year-old’s fortune; he makes his debut on the Korea wealth rankings at No. 48 with a net worth of $800 million.
Buried deep in the semiconductor supply chain, Soulbrain produces essential chemical products that are used in the treatment and preparation of silicon wafers used to make chips. Soulbrain’s customers include Jay Y. Lee’s Samsung Electronics and Chey Tae-won’s SK Hynix, the two largest memory chip makers in the world by revenue.
Like many companies in the notoriously cyclical semiconductor industry, Soulbrain reported a fall in revenue and earnings in 2023 amid weak demand for smartphones and personal computers. For the fiscal year 2023, the semiconductor chemical supplier reported that revenue dropped 23% year-over-year to 844 billion won ($625 million), while net income fell 22% from the previous year to 131 billion won.
But investors believe the AI boom will boost Soulbrain’s earnings. A similar scenario has played out at Hanmi Semiconductor and South Korean chip-testing firm Leeno Industrial. Both Hanmi Semiconductor’s Kwak and Leeno Industrial founder Lee Chae-yoon, who became a billionaire last month, also make their debuts on the Korea’s 50 Richest list, at No. 8 and No. 35, respectively.
“Demand for advanced products such as HBM is steadily increasing,” Soulbrain said in its 2023 annual report, referring to high-bandwidth memory—a type of high-performance memory chip used in AI computing.
Soulbrain’s CMP (which stands for chemical mechanical planarization) special polishing compounds, or slurries, are especially important for HBM production. The slurries are used to polish the semiconductor layers to ensure that the silicon wafers have virtually no imperfections on their surfaces. A report published in March by Samsung Securities recommended investing in Soulbrain because of the “CMP step increases in HBM” chips, which have more layers than other memory chips.
Soulbrain was established in July 2020 as a spinoff from Soulbrain Holdings, and went public on South Korea’s technology-rich Kosdaq stock exchange the following month. Besides its stake in Soulbrain, parent company Soulbrain Holdings also owns businesses that supply chemicals to makers of electric vehicle batteries and display panels, as well as interests in biotech companies such as U.S.-based ARK Diagnostics.
Chung founded Soulbrain Holdings, then called Techno Trading, in 1986 and listed it on the Kosdaq stock exchange in 2000. Previously, Chung, who studied chemical engineering at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, worked for four years at Songwon Trading, where he imported semiconductor chemicals from Japan.
“I imported semiconductor etching chemicals from Japan and other countries and supplied them to domestic Korean semiconductor companies, and profitability was quite good,” Chung told South Korea’s Herald newspaper in 2013. “I thought it would be good to try it myself.”
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