Samsung Hits $1 Trillion Valuation as AI Memory Chip Demand Drives 10% Share Surge

Samsung reached a $1 trillion valuation on Wednesday as shares of the South Korean tech giant surged more than 10 percent, driven by surging demand for its memory chips used in artificial intelligence systems. The milestone makes Samsung the second Asian company to cross the trillion-dollar threshold after TSMC, TechCrunch reported.

The news comes on the heels of a blockbuster earnings report released last week, in which Samsung posted profits eight times higher than the same period a year ago.

Every company building AI right now needs chips, and Samsung makes the memory chips that power those AI systems. Demand is surging while supply struggles to keep up, pushing prices higher and boosting Samsung’s profits.

U.S. Soil. Apple has long relied almost exclusively on TSMC in Taiwan for its chip production. If Samsung lands the deal, it would mark a significant shift in the global semiconductor supply chain. At the heart of Samsung’s profit boom is high-bandwidth memory, also known as HBM, a type of chip critical to running AI systems that has dramatically improved the company’s margins.

Competition remains intense. Rival SK Hynix, a South Korean semiconductor company, is aggressively vying for the same market. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are the world’s three largest memory chip makers.

All three companies have pulled investment away from their consumer chip businesses to ramp up production of HBM, which carries substantially higher margins and has become essential to powering large-scale AI infrastructure. Despite Wednesday’s historic surge, Samsung still faces headwinds at home.

Samsung workers are threatening an 18-day strike later this month over a larger share of the AI windfall.

The threatened Samsung worker strike centers on demands for greater participation in the profits generated by the company’s AI-related gains. Samsung Electronics is based in South Korea. Meanwhile, the company’s phone and TV divisions, which also need to buy those same memory chips to build their products, are paying a steep price for the very chips powering Samsung’s record profits.

The convergence of AI demand, potential new manufacturing partnerships with Apple, and internal labor tensions underscores the mixed pressures facing one of Asia’s most valuable companies even as its valuation crossed a historic threshold.