South Korean technology conglomerate and the largest company by market capitalisation on the KOSPI index. Samsung Electronics is part of a chaebol with eight listed subsidiaries. In May 2026 its market value crossed $1trn for the first time, having risen by 400% over the previous year on AI-memory demand. First-quarter 2026 operating profit was 57trn won ($38bn), more than eight times a year earlier; semiconductors accounted for 61% of sales and 94% of operating profit. It is one of only three firms that can mass-produce the memory chips needed for AI, alongside SK Hynix and Micron. Memory volumes rose ~20% quarter-on-quarter while the average selling price rose 90%.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dominate the market for mainstream memory chips, the commodity of the semiconductor world. The two firms have also pioneered high-bandwidth memory (HBM) technology, an essential element in chips for generative artificial intelligence that enables higher performance at smaller sizes and lower power consumption. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, has called HBM "a technology miracle".
In July 2025 Samsung signed a $16.5bn deal to supply advanced chips to Tesla from a fab in Texas, a lift to its foundry ambitions; however, the project has fallen behind schedule. Samsung plans to spend around $3.5bn on its foundry arm in 2025, a fraction of TSMC's $38bn-$42bn. Samsung has struggled with manufacturing issues at its most advanced fabs. It is aiming to start producing two-nanometre chips in South Korea in late 2025, and is setting up a fab in Texas.
Samsung and SK Hynix have between them pledged $700bn to a semiconductor "mega-cluster" in Yongin City, 40km south of Seoul, by 2047—a third more than their combined global capital spending over the past decade. The project, the centrepiece of President Lee Jae-myung's $530bn chip-industry plan, aims to move beyond memory chips and nurture a broader semiconductor supply chain.
In late 2025 Samsung Electronics set up a mergers-and-acquisitions unit which can tap the company's $74bn war chest of cash to help it succeed in the AI age.
Between mid-July 2024 and early April 2025, Samsung Electronics lost roughly a third of its market value—some $160bn.
Samsung Electronics is among 120 KOSPI companies that have published "Value-Up" disclosures under South Korea's programme of corporate reform. On May 22nd 2025 its subsidiary Samsung Biologics, the KOSPI's third-largest company by value and a biotech powerhouse, announced it would spin off its drug-development arm to focus on its core contracting business.
"I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives."