--- title: "Samsung Says Quarterly Profit Jumped 1,810% as AI Memory Demand Booms" description: "Samsung Electronics guided to a preliminary second-quarter operating profit of about 89.4 trillion won ($58 billion), up roughly 1,810% from a year earlier, as prices for the memory chips that feed artificial-intelligence systems surged. The figure, driven by a boom in high-bandwidth memory, is one of the largest quarterly profits a technology company has ever reported, though it is flattered by a very weak year-ago quarter." category: "Companies" category_url: https://boursel.com/category/companies author: "Hannah Blackwood" published: 2026-07-07T07:37:10.000Z updated: 2026-07-07T07:37:10.000Z canonical: https://boursel.com/article/samsung-says-quarterly-profit-jumped-1-810-as-ai-memory-demand-booms tags: ["samsung", "semiconductors", "memory-chips", "ai", "earnings", "hbm"] --- # Samsung Says Quarterly Profit Jumped 1,810% as AI Memory Demand Booms Samsung Electronics guided to a preliminary second-quarter operating profit of about 89.4 trillion won ($58 billion), up roughly 1,810% from a year earlier, as prices for the memory chips that feed artificial-intelligence systems surged. The figure, driven by a boom in high-bandwidth memory, is one of the largest quarterly profits a technology company has ever reported, though it is flattered by a very weak year-ago quarter. Samsung Electronics has put a number on just how lucrative the artificial-intelligence boom has become for the companies that make memory chips. In preliminary guidance for the three months to June, the South Korean group said operating profit came in at about 89.4 trillion Korean won, roughly $58 billion, up in the region of 1,810% from the same quarter a year earlier, [CNBC reported](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/07/samsung-electronics-preliminary-second-quarter-profit-hits-fresh-high.html). Revenue rose to around 171 trillion won. ## What the numbers say These are preliminary figures; Samsung releases full, audited results later in the month, and the headline profit is stated before some costs such as performance bonuses. Even so, the scale is extraordinary. A quarterly operating profit near $58 billion ranks among the largest ever posted by a technology company, exceeding the recent quarterly profits of the likes of Nvidia and Apple, [as Korea Times noted](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260707/samsung-electronics-projects-record-q2-earnings-with-584-bil-operating-profit). It also marked a jump of more than half from the previous quarter. ## Why it happened The driver is memory. Samsung is one of the world's largest makers of the chips that store data, and prices for those chips have rocketed as AI has taken hold. Data centers running AI need vast quantities of memory, and one type in particular, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a fast, stacked chip that sits beside AI processors, has been in especially short supply. Prices for standard memory rose sharply too: industry data pointed to steep quarter-on-quarter increases in the price of both DRAM (working memory) and NAND flash (storage). When a commodity producer's prices climb that fast, profit can balloon, because the extra revenue drops almost straight to the bottom line. ## The base effect There is an important caveat behind the eye-catching percentage. A rise of 1,810% looks enormous partly because the comparison quarter was so poor. In the second quarter of 2025, the memory industry was mired in oversupply and weak prices, and Samsung's profit was depressed. Measuring today's strong result against that low base mechanically produces a huge percentage gain. The profit is genuinely large; the multiple is amplified by where the company started. ## Not the HBM leader, and still this profitable Notably, Samsung is not even the front-runner in the hottest corner of the market. Its smaller rival SK Hynix leads in high-bandwidth memory, and Micron has been competing hard for second place. That Samsung can post a record-shattering quarter while trailing in HBM underlines how broad and powerful the memory upcycle has become: demand is so strong across every category of chip that even the number-two supplier in the marquee product is earning at an unprecedented rate. ## Why it matters For investors, Samsung's guidance is one of the clearest reads yet on how much of the money flowing into AI is landing on the memory industry, not just on chip designers like Nvidia. It also carries a warning. Memory is famously cyclical: the same pricing power that inflates profits today can reverse quickly if AI spending slows or if manufacturers add capacity faster than demand grows. Indeed, Samsung's shares fell after the guidance, with investors focused on heavy future capital spending and the risk that the cycle eventually turns. The quarter shows the memory boom at full flood; the open question is how long the tide stays in. This article is informational and not investment advice. ## Sources - [Samsung Electronics preliminary second-quarter profit hits fresh high](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/07/samsung-electronics-preliminary-second-quarter-profit-hits-fresh-high.html) - [Samsung Electronics projects record Q2 earnings with $58.4 bil. operating profit](https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260707/samsung-electronics-projects-record-q2-earnings-with-584-bil-operating-profit)