Samsung's 48x Q1: $36 Billion Chip Profit on the AI Memory Crunch

South Korea's Samsung Electronics reported a Q1 group operating profit of 57.2 trillion won (~$38.5 billion) on Thursday, up 756% year on year. Group revenue hit 133.9 trillion won (~$90 billion), up 69%. Both are records for a single quarter, and both came in well above analyst consensus.

The number that mattered most: the Device Solutions semiconductor arm posted 53.7 trillion won (~$36 billion) in operating profit, almost 48 times the same quarter last year, when the same division earned about 1 trillion won.

What is driving the print

The AI data center boom has constrained the supply of memory chips and pushed prices higher across HBM, server DRAM, and DDR5. Samsung's chip business is the biggest single beneficiary inside the Korean tech complex.

Chip-division revenue alone reached 81.7 trillion won in Q1, up 225% year on year. By contrast, Samsung's Device eXperience arm, which sells smartphones, TVs, and home appliances, posted 52.7 trillion won in revenue and just 3 trillion won in profit. Display added another 6.7 trillion won in revenue and Harman 3.8 trillion won.

The chip division now produces well over 90% of group operating profit, a structural shift compared with even three years ago, when the company's mobile and consumer-electronics businesses still carried meaningful weight.

The HBM gap to SK Hynix is closing

Samsung said in February it had become the first chipmaker in the world to mass-produce HBM4 memory chips and ship them to unnamed customers. SK Hynix held a 57% revenue share in the global HBM market in Q4 2025 and has been the more profitable of the two on AI memory.

Samsung's earnings release made clear it sees no slowdown. Server memory demand is expected to remain strong into the second half as hyperscalers continue to build for AI adoption and as agentic AI use cases scale, the company said.

The risk on the other side

Higher memory prices are a tax on Samsung's own smartphone and home-appliance businesses, which buy the chips. The Middle East conflict adds pressure on Samsung's raw-material and energy supply chain, the company flagged.

Samsung shares are up about 90% in 2026 and gave back early gains on the day of the print, ending 0.8% lower. The market has spent the year buying the AI-memory thesis. The Q1 number just hardened it.

Sources: CNBC, Korea Herald, Bloomberg, Business Times SG