The world’s largest semiconductor-maker is reaping the rewards of a global memory chip shortage pushed by AI demand so rapacious that it is making everybody else depressing.
Samsung said in its latest earnings report that it noticed report income, up virtually 500% from the identical first quarter final 12 months, at $31.72 billion. The determine was boosted by a virtually 50-times bounce in income for its chip enterprise.
The corporate has offered out all of its reminiscence manufacturing capability for the remainder of this 12 months and says that shortages, that are driving up costs of every part from laptops to smartphones to external storage devices to gaming consoles, are going to get worse in 2027.
In an investor name for its earnings report, one of many firm’s reminiscence chip executives, Kim Jaejune, stated, “Based mostly solely on the demand at present acquired for 2027, the supply-to-demand hole for 2027 is ready to widen even additional than in 2026.”
Lengthy-term reminiscence loss
Reminiscence costs started rising considerably final 12 months as a boom in data centers supporting AI corporations devoured up huge provides of reminiscence used to energy the {hardware} that processes all their knowledge. That, in flip, led to world shortages and worth spikes which might be nonetheless being felt and that — in response to Samsung — will not ease up anytime quickly.
Samsung is making an attempt to maintain up with demand from corporations, together with Nvidia, even because it competes with those self same corporations, that are additionally producing their very own semiconductors. Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet are among the many world’s top memory-makers, however they’re additionally prospects of Samsung and might’t produce the quantity of reminiscence required for his or her rising wants themselves.
