Samsung’s Record Profit Driven by AI Memory Demand
Samsung Electronics Co. reported a significant increase in quarterly profit, far exceeding expectations. This surge highlights the strong demand for AI memory chips despite global market instability caused by conflicts in the Middle East.
Cloud service providers are increasing their orders for high-bandwidth memory and other chips used in data centers to support artificial intelligence services. This has led to higher volumes and improved margins for the conglomerate that produces both chips and smartphones.
Samsung’s shares, which had declined from their February peak, rose as much as 4.9% during early morning trading in Seoul on Tuesday. This increase helped alleviate some concerns that the US-Iran conflict might negatively impact spending on energy-intensive AI hardware. Shares of rival SK Hynix Inc. also increased by 5.3%.
Samsung announced preliminary operating profit of 57.2 trillion won ($37.9 billion) for the March quarter, marking a 755% increase and setting a new record. This surpasses analysts’ average projection of 39.3 trillion won. Revenue reached 133 trillion won, exceeding the average estimate of 116.8 trillion won. The company will release a full financial statement, including net income and divisional breakdowns, on April 30.
“It’s all driven by memory and it’s stronger than what people anticipated,” said Sanjeev Rana, head of research at CLSA Securities Korea. He estimated that memory may contribute close to 90% of total operating profit. Supply is “very tight” for HBM and conventional DRAM products, he added.
Korea’s largest company dominates the global memory supply alongside SK Hynix and Micron Technology Inc. These companies have increasingly focused production on HBM used in Nvidia Corp.’s AI accelerators, tightening the supply of conventional memory.
Samsung’s first-quarter operating profit outperformed its performance in other quarters and surpassed the 43.6 trillion won generated in all of 2025. South Korea’s semiconductor exports, a key indicator of global technology demand, soared 151.4% in March to a record $32.8 billion, according to government data.
“Samsung is in the midst of a sharp profit recovery cycle,” wrote Morgan Stanley analysts Shawn Kim, Ryan Kim, Duan Liu, and Cindy Huang in a report. They noted that there is significant upside once we adjust to earnings growth during a period of unprecedented capacity constraints.
Analysts remain optimistic about South Korea’s largest company, largely dismissing concerns about AI optimization by offerings such as Google’s TurboQuant or Anthropic’s Claude Mythos.
“It’s fast becoming a case of ‘Turbowhatever’, with investors glossing over the threat of the Google compression technology,” said Andrew Jackson, head of Japanese equity strategy at Ortus Advisors.
The average selling price of global DRAM surged 64% in the first quarter from the previous quarter, according to Citigroup analysts Peter Lee and Jayden Oh in an April 2 report. For Samsung, Citigroup forecasts annual operating profit of 310 trillion won — or the equivalent of $206 billion — in 2026. They expect strong AI inference demand to sustain pricing.
Earlier this year, Samsung was the first to commercially ship next-generation HBM4 to customers, following years of struggles and qualification delays that allowed rival SK Hynix to dominate the lucrative field. Samsung’s shares gained more than 120% last year, lagging behind SK Hynix’s more than 270% jump.
Samsung showcased its cutting-edge HBM4E chip at Nvidia’s GTC event last month, where the US company’s boss Jensen Huang stated that the Korean company’s advanced 4-nanometer technology will be used to manufacture Groq 3 processors. Samsung has also signed a deal to supply HBM4 chips to Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
