Samsung Electronics has announced its first-quarter 2026 financial results, marking a record-breaking period thanks to its memory division. The burgeoning artificial intelligence infrastructure, coupled with escalating memory costs and insufficient production capacity, has propelled the company’s chip business to become the undisputed engine of the group. To put this into perspective, Samsung has generated almost as much profit this quarter as it did for the entirety of 2025. We are talking about a 49-fold increase in its revenue from memory sales. This trend appears to be just the beginning, with expectations that this boom will continue for several more quarters.
Samsung’s total operating profit surged from 6.69 trillion won in the first quarter of 2025 to 57.2 trillion won in the same period of 2026. This translates to a jump from approximately 3.88 billion euros or 4.55 billion dollars to 33.18 billion euros or 38.90 billion dollars. The chip division alone saw its earnings skyrocket from a modest 638 million euros (748 million dollars) to a staggering 31.15 billion euros (36.52 billion dollars).
Samsung Isn’t Just Selling More Memory; It’s Selling It at Significantly Higher Prices
Samsung has achieved these record revenues not by increasing the volume of memory sold, but by selling the same amount of memory at a substantially higher price. The demand from AI data centers is consuming nearly all available production capacity. Compounding this, Samsung is phasing out the production of consumer memory due to its low profitability and declining sales. This shift has created a situation where supply is falling short of demand, leading to price increases. Consequently, the company has pivoted towards producing server-grade DRAM memory and, in particular, high-priced HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) essential for NVIDIA GPUs used in AI applications.
This strategic adjustment allows Samsung to generate significantly more revenue rather than being constrained by production limitations. By deprioritizing conventional chips and also seeing a drastic price increase in NAND flash memory, which is now predominantly allocated to enterprise-grade SSDs with both higher prices and greater demand, Samsung is experiencing a revenue surge. The company has also acknowledged that its supply is “far below” customer demand and that the supply gap in 2027 could be even more pronounced than in 2026. This reinforces projections that the market is unlikely to see improvement until at least 2028.
Samsung is also working to gain ground against SK Hynix in the HBM memory segment, an area where its South Korean rival currently holds an advantage in NVIDIA’s supply chain. The company has announced the commencement of mass sales of HBM4 for NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin platform, a move that is expected to more than triple its HBM memory revenue this year compared to 2025. Samsung further stated that it is preparing HBM4E samples for the second quarter of 2026 and anticipates continued strong demand for server memory in the latter half of the year due to the increasing enterprise adoption of AI, LLMs, and agent-based AI systems.
