Samsung profit surges 19-fold on soaring AI chip demand

Samsung Electronics is expected to report an operating profit of approximately 86 trillion won, roughly $56.35B, for the second quarter of 2026. That figure is 19 times larger than the 4.7 trillion won the company posted in the same quarter a year ago.

This would mark Samsung’s third consecutive record quarterly profit.

What is actually driving this

High-bandwidth memory, or HBM, is the product category getting most of the attention. It is purpose-built for the kind of parallel computations that large AI models require, and right now demand is outrunning supply by a meaningful margin.

Average selling prices for DRAM rose roughly 44% quarter-on-quarter in Q2 2026, according to Citi Research. NAND prices climbed approximately 53% over the same period.

Supply constraints in the memory market are expected to persist well into 2027. Businesses ramping up agentic AI workloads and expanding inference infrastructure are committing to multi-year spending cycles.

Samsung’s first quarter of 2026 already set a record, with operating profit coming in at 57.2 trillion won on revenue of approximately 133.9 trillion won, representing more than an eightfold increase year-on-year. The Q2 estimate nearly doubles that figure.

Samsung is not alone, but it is leading

SK Hynix and Micron Technologies have both seen significant share price appreciation throughout 2026. Samsung’s shares are up 158% year-to-date in 2026, a move that has pushed the company’s market cap past the $1 trillion mark.

The South Korean government has been supportive of capacity expansion efforts, and Samsung is making long-term investments to meet projected demand.

Delays in AI infrastructure investment could soften demand faster than supply adjustments allow. Employee bonus provisions, a recurring variable in South Korean corporate accounting, may also affect the final profit figure when Samsung releases its detailed Q2 report later in July 2026.

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