Samsung posts record profit on AI boom

Samsung Electronics posted a record first quarter, with operating profit surpassing 57 trillion won and setting a new high for a South Korean company.

The result easily breaks the company’s previous quarterly record of 20 trillion won, underscoring the strength of an artificial intelligence-driven boom in memory chips. Analysts say the surge has pushed Samsung’s earnings into the ranks of global Big Tech.

In a regulatory filing on Monday, Samsung Electronics said revenue for the January to March period reached 133 trillion won, while operating profit was estimated at 57.2 trillion won. That marks increases of 68.06 percent and 755.01 percent from a year earlier.

The company had set its previous quarterly records in the fourth quarter of last year, with revenue of 93.8 trillion won and operating profit of 20.1 trillion won. Both figures were surpassed within a single quarter. Operating profit alone jumped about 185 percent in three months, nearly tripling over the period.

Brokerages say a prolonged shortage of memory chips could lift Samsung’s annual operating profit to around 300 trillion won this year and up to 400 trillion won next year, potentially making it the world’s most profitable company.

Lee Jong-hwan, a professor of system semiconductor engineering at Sangmyung University, said the company’s strong performance is likely to continue, supported by rising orders for high bandwidth memory from Nvidia and steady demand for conventional DRAM.


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