AI chip boom pushes Samsung profits to record $80bn

Samsung Electronics is heading toward another record quarter, and this one comes with a very large number attached. The company said operating profit for the three months to the end of September is expected to reach 107.4tn won, or £61bn and $80bn, about nine times what it made a year earlier.

The driver is obvious: memory chips for AI data centres. Samsung sits among the biggest makers of those chips, alongside SK Hynix in South Korea and Micron in the US, and those parts are central to the systems used by AI firms such as Nvidia. The company also expects a lift from its latest folding phones, which arrived in August.

This would be Samsung’s fourth record quarter in a row. The full third-quarter results are due at the end of October, but South Korean firms often issue these early profit previews to set expectations for investors before the detailed numbers land.

The bigger story is the squeeze behind the boom. Demand for AI hardware has been so strong that it has tightened semiconductor supply worldwide, helped push up sales for chipmakers, and lifted Samsung’s market value above $1tn earlier this year. The ripple effects go further than chipmakers too: Samsung has already raised prices on some products, and smartphones and computers have become more expensive as a result.

The money flowing into AI is still accelerating. Google, Amazon and Meta have said they will spend more than $650bn on AI projects this year, while South Korea announced in June plans for at least $880bn in projects led by Samsung and SK Hynix to expand chip manufacturing in the years ahead. Japan, China and Taiwan are also pouring cash into new chip plants.