Samsung profits surge eight-fold as AI memory chip sales rise despite war worries

Samsung Electronics Co. reported an eightfold increase in quarterly profit that was far more than anticipated, highlighting the strong demand for AI memory chips despite the uncertainty brought on by the Middle East conflict.

The chips-to-smartphones conglomerate is seeing an increase in both volumes and profits as a result of customers led by cloud service providers increasing their orders for high-bandwidth memory and other chips used in data centres to feed artificial intelligence services.

Pre-market trading in Seoul on Tuesday saw a 5% increase in Samsung shares, which had fallen from their February peak. This helped allay some of the concerns that the US-Iran confrontation may make expenditure on energy-guzzling AI systems less durable.

In contrast to experts' average estimate of 39.3 trillion won, Samsung reported preliminary operating profit for the March quarter of 57.2 trillion won ($37.9 billion), up 755% to set a record. Compared to the average expectation of 116.8 trillion won, revenue increased to 133 trillion won. Later this month, the business will publish a comprehensive financial statement that includes divisional breakdowns and net profits.

Together with SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc., Samsung controls the majority of the world's memory supply. The trio has tightened the supply of conventional memory in recent years by shifting production more and more toward high-bandwidth memory used in Nvidia Corp.'s AI accelerators.

Samsung's operating profit for the first quarter surpassed the 43.6 trillion won the corporation earned in 2025 and dwarfs its performance in preceding quarters.

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According to government data, South Korea's semiconductor exports, a gauge of the demand for technology worldwide, increased 151.4% to a record $32.8 billion in March.

Concerns regarding AI optimisation by products like Google's TurboQuant or Anthropic's Claude Mythos are mainly dismissed by analysts, who are still optimistic about the largest corporation in South Korea.

According to a report published on April 2 by Citigroup analysts Peter Lee and Jayden Oh, the average selling price of worldwide DRAM increased by 64% in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter. Citigroup predicts an annual operational profit of 310 trillion won, or $206 billion, for Samsung in 2026, stating that it anticipates high demand for AI inference to maintain pricing.

After years of difficulties and qualification delays that allowed rival SK Hynix to control the lucrative market, Samsung was the first to commercially ship next-generation HBM4 to customers earlier this year. Last year, Samsung's stock increased by more than 120%, while SK Hynix's increased by more than 270%.

At Nvidia's GTC presentation last month, the Suwon-based business also unveiled its state-of-the-art HBM4E chip. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang added that Groq 3 processors will be made using Samsung's cutting-edge 4-nanometer technology. Additionally, Samsung has agreed to supply Advanced Micro Devices Inc. with HBM4 chips.