Samsung posts record profit with 750%+ surge driven by the artificial intelligence boom
Samsung just dropped a quarterly result that left the market absolutely stunned.
In the first quarter of 2026, the South Korean giant reported more than a 750% jump in operating profit compared to the same period last year, shattering records and blowing past analyst estimates by a wide margin.
That is no small feat.
We are talking about 57.2 trillion Korean won in operating profit, roughly 38.4 billion dollars. That single number already surpasses the company’s total profit for the entire year of 2025, which came in at 43.6 trillion won. Total revenue hit 133.9 trillion won, about 89.96 billion dollars, also a record, up approximately 70% year over year.
So what is behind this historic leap?
The answer comes down to two ingredients that have been moving in lockstep for a while now: memory chips and the explosion of artificial intelligence.
The global race to build AI infrastructure is consuming memory at a pace the market simply cannot keep up with, and Samsung sits right at the center of this perfect storm. 🚀
In the sections ahead, you will understand what these numbers actually mean, how the chip division became the undisputed star of the earnings report, which technology sits at the heart of this battle, and what to expect over the coming months for the semiconductor industry.
First quarter numbers in detail
Before diving into the analysis, it is worth putting the numbers side by side with what the market was expecting. The LSEG SmartEstimate, which gives more weight to analysts with stronger track records, projected revenue of 132.69 trillion won and operating profit of 55.28 trillion won. Samsung beat both forecasts:
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- Revenue: 133.9 trillion won versus 132.69 trillion expected
- Operating profit: 57.2 trillion won versus 55.28 trillion expected
The profit figure was in line with Samsung’s own preliminary estimate, but the sheer magnitude of the turnaround is what really grabbed attention. In the same quarter last year, operating profit was a tiny fraction of what it is now. The semiconductor division alone accounted for more than 90% of the company’s total profit, pulling in 53.7 trillion won compared to roughly 1 trillion won in the first quarter of 2025.
Total chip sales reached 81.7 trillion won, a 225% jump from the prior year. These are numbers that illustrate the scale of the upcycle the memory industry is going through, fueled by the insatiable demand from AI data centers.
After the results were released, Samsung shares rose about 1% on the Seoul exchange but gave back some of those gains during the session, closing down 0.8%. Still, the stock has climbed roughly 90% year to date, reflecting investor confidence in the AI-driven growth thesis.
The role of memory chips in the AI boom
When we talk about artificial intelligence, it is easy to think only about language models, chatbots, and the creative tools that have taken over our daily lives. But there is a far less glamorous layer that makes all of it work, and it is called High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM. Without this component, no large AI model can process the billions of parameters that define its performance. It is essentially the invisible fuel of the revolution we are living through, and Samsung is one of the very few companies on the planet capable of producing it at industrial scale.
Demand for HBM has skyrocketed alongside the growth of GPUs used in data centers. Companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and the major cloud computing players are racing to build ever-larger infrastructures to train and run AI models. Every cutting-edge server that comes online requires massive amounts of high-performance memory, and there is no sign of this cycle slowing down.
Samsung itself confirmed in its earnings report that the memory business surpassed its quarterly sales record by serving high-value AI-related demand, even amid limited supply availability. The company noted that price increases across the broader memory industry also contributed to the results.
And the supply-demand picture is far from normalizing. During the earnings call, a Samsung executive revealed that the demand fulfillment rate is at its lowest level in history. Unlike in previous years, customers worried about shortages are pulling forward orders that would not have been placed until 2027. The expectation is that the gap between supply and demand will widen even further over the next year.
Beyond HBM, the conventional DRAM and NAND Flash memory segments also felt the push from artificial intelligence. Edge devices, enterprise servers, and even modern smartphones are integrating AI capabilities locally, which increases the need for memory at every level of the technology stack. This creates a multiplier effect that extends well beyond the big data centers, reaching the consumer market and enterprise segment at the same time. For Samsung, which operates in virtually all of these segments, the landscape could not be more favorable.
The race for HBM4 and the rivalry with SK Hynix
Despite the spectacular results, Samsung still has a thorn in its side when it comes to HBM: fellow South Korean rival SK Hynix. Samsung lost the early lead in this technology and has been trying to make up lost ground in one of the most intense rivalries in the semiconductor industry.
In February of this year, Samsung announced it became the first company in the world to begin mass production of HBM4 chips, the sixth generation of the technology and the most advanced to date. The chips are being shipped to customers whose identities have not been publicly disclosed. HBM4 is considered the key memory component for NVIDIA’s next-generation Vera Rubin architecture, designed for high-powered AI workloads in data centers.
SK Hynix, for its part, had already sent samples of its own HBM4 to customers last March and announced in September 2025 that mass production was ready. However, the company has not yet confirmed the start of commercial HBM4 deliveries, which gives Samsung an important window of opportunity.
Ray Wang, an analyst at SemiAnalysis covering memory out of Seoul, noted that Samsung has made significant improvements on HBM4 and that the gap with SK Hynix is narrower than it was in previous generations. That said, he pointed out that SK Hynix still leads the HBM race compared to its competitors.
According to data from Counterpoint Research, SK Hynix maintained its lead in the HBM market with a 57% share of revenue in the last quarter of 2025. Closing that gap is a strategic priority for Samsung, which needs to secure certification for its chips within the ecosystems of its biggest customers, especially NVIDIA, known for being highly selective with memory suppliers for its most advanced GPUs. 💡
What the numbers reveal about Samsung’s strength
A 750% jump in operating profit in a single quarter does not happen by accident. This kind of result is the product of years of investment in research, development, and manufacturing capacity, combined with market timing that very few can predict with any precision. Samsung had gone through a rough stretch in 2023 and part of 2024, when a memory oversupply hammered global prices and squeezed margins across the entire industry. The company had to absorb losses, cut costs, and keep investing in technology without seeing an immediate return, and that discipline is exactly what explains the scale of the recovery now.
The 57.2 trillion won figure in operating profit is even more impressive when placed in historical context. Samsung’s previous record had been set in the third quarter of 2018 at 17.6 trillion won, and that mark had already been surpassed in the last quarter of 2025. Now the bar has moved to an entirely different level. Beating an entire year’s worth of accumulated profit in a single quarter is something that rarely happens in the corporate world, especially in capital-intensive sectors like semiconductors.
This signals not just a cyclical recovery but a structural shift in the demand dynamics for memory chips. The market is coming to understand that AI is not a passing fad and that the infrastructure required to support it will keep growing for many years to come, which completely changes the pricing floor and the investment logic for the sector.
Samsung itself signaled confidence in this trend, stating that it expects demand for server memory to remain strong in the second half of the year as hyperscalers continue expanding AI adoption and demand for agentic AI gains traction.
Challenges on the horizon: consumer electronics and geopolitics
Not everything is smooth sailing, of course. While the chip business is in an extraordinary moment, the rising memory prices that benefit the semiconductor division can have the opposite effect on other parts of Samsung.
The company is one of the largest manufacturers of smartphones and home appliances in the world, and those segments rely on the very same memory chips whose prices keep climbing. When manufacturers prioritize production for higher-margin AI applications, supply for the consumer electronics market gets squeezed, and that puts pressure on the costs of Samsung’s own products. It is an interesting internal dilemma: the chip arm profits more, but the smartphone and appliance arm feels the pinch.
On top of that, during the earnings call on Thursday, Samsung mentioned it is monitoring the conflict in the Middle East, which poses a risk to its raw material and energy supply chains. The semiconductor industry depends on highly specialized inputs, and any disruption in logistics routes or material supply can have a direct impact on production capacity.
In the broader picture, the chip industry is going through an unprecedented geopolitical transformation, with governments investing heavily to bring production within their own borders, whether through the CHIPS Act in the United States, similar efforts in Europe, or across Asia. Samsung, as one of the most important players in this ecosystem, finds itself in the middle of all these battles, which adds both opportunities and risks to its growth outlook.
What to expect from the semiconductor industry in the coming months
The semiconductor sector is famous for its cycles — periods of shortage followed by periods of oversupply — and the market is debating intensely where exactly we stand within this cycle right now. The good news is that structural demand tied to artificial intelligence introduces a new variable into the equation. Unlike previous cycles driven primarily by PCs and smartphones, the current growth engine is data centers and AI infrastructure, which require far more sophisticated components with significantly higher margins. This suggests that even if some correction occurs, the demand floor will be much higher than in past cycles.
For Samsung specifically, the second half of 2026 should bring new challenges and opportunities at the same time. The company is accelerating development and delivery of the next generation of HBM and needs to make sure its products get certified by key customers. Clearing that technical and commercial hurdle would be a massive catalyst for maintaining the pace of profit growth, and the market is watching every announcement in this space closely.
Competitive pressure from SK Hynix, the need to meet demand that shows no signs of slowing, and geopolitical risks all add up to a complex landscape, but market fundamentals keep pointing in the same direction: AI infrastructure will need more and more memory, and companies that can manufacture the most advanced chips will be in a privileged position. 🌐
The artificial intelligence boom is not just a software story. It is increasingly a story about hardware, factories, materials engineering, and companies like Samsung that bet early on this direction.
The numbers speak for themselves, and they are saying this chapter is far from over.
