Samsung's chip profit jumped 250x — AI memory is the whole story

Samsung's Device Solutions division posted ₩89.2 trillion (~$62B) in Q2 operating profit, more than 250x what it made in the same quarter a year ago and well past the ~₩79.3T analysts penciled in. Group net income landed at ₩71.3T.

Phones didn't do this. HBM did. Samsung ramped HBM4 volume, shipped the industry's first HBM4E samples to lead customers, and set record DRAM and NAND bit shipments on AI server demand plus industry-wide price hikes. Rival SK Hynix put up ₩60.5T, up 557% — a record of its own, and still a miss against expectations. Samsung also locked in a $200B+ supply deal with Broadcom running through 2030.

The awkward footnote: memory got so expensive that Samsung's own Galaxy mobile unit swung to an operating loss. The company is now effectively charging itself a fortune for RAM. Investors aren't uniformly thrilled either — chip shares have wobbled on worries about data-center overcapacity and the debt piling up behind the AI buildout.

Why it matters: commodity memory has quietly become the highest-margin business in tech, and every device that needs RAM — including Samsung's own — is paying the AI tax.