# Samsung's chip division posted a 250-fold profit surge as AI memory shortages rewrite the rules of the semiconductor market > Source: > Published: 2026-07-30 01:33:16+00:00 *Bloomberg reported today that Samsung's semiconductor arm logged an operating profit of 89.2 trillion won, roughly $62 billion, in the June quarter, a more than 250-fold jump driven entirely by the AI memory crunch that has already sold out Micron's 2027 output and sent SanDisk tumbling more than 35% this month.* That number deserves a moment. A 250-fold jump is not a percentage improvement. It's a business that was barely breathing twelve months ago now generating more profit in a single quarter than most countries collect in tax revenue. Bloomberg's reporting today confirms what the memory market has been signaling for months: the shortage of high-bandwidth memory for AI data centers is not a supply blip. It's a structural reordering of who holds power in the semiconductor industry. Samsung's chip division accounted for the overwhelming majority of the company's total profit in the period, with AI memory as the engine behind nearly all of it. The company began mass-producing HBM4 chips in February 2026 - the first to commercially ship sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia's Vera Rubin AI platform. Sales scaled fast. The chip unit's operating margins reportedly exceeded 70% in the first quarter alone, surpassing both Nvidia and TSMC. That is an extraordinary inversion for a company whose memory division posted some of its worst results on record just over a year ago, when the business looked broken rather than dominant. Standard DRAM, the commodity chip that filled Samsung's coffers in previous cycles, is fungible. Prices collapse when supply expands. HBM is different. Building it requires stacking multiple DRAM dies on top of each other using a process called through-silicon via bonding, then integrating the result directly with a processor using advanced packaging. The manufacturing complexity is enormous, the yields are difficult, and the capacity to produce it cannot simply be switched on. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron together control roughly 90% of global DRAM production, according to Counterpoint Research, but even that oligopoly can't build HBM fast enough to meet AI demand. SK Hynix has warned that shortages could persist past 2030. Samsung and SK Hynix have both said customers are already reserving supply years ahead. Micron's situation illustrates the point plainly. The company's entire HBM output through 2027 is already committed under long-term contracts, as StartupFortune has previously reported. New capacity from its Idaho and Singapore facilities won't contribute meaningfully until 2028. That's not a misprint. Buyers who want HBM3E or HBM4 today are, in many cases, negotiating for chips they won't receive for two years. Scarcity of that depth sets prices. It also sets margins. And those margins are now showing up in Samsung's quarterly filings with a force that makes the numbers look like typos. ## What the SanDisk crash actually tells you Here's the thing: the same week Samsung announced a profit that no technology company has ever posted in a single quarter, SanDisk fell more than 35% and Micron dropped around 20%. The apparent contradiction resolved quickly on inspection. SanDisk and Western Digital are heavily exposed to NAND flash, the consumer-facing storage market, not to HBM. Investors, as Benzinga noted, were selling the sector rather than the specific story. Memory is not a monolith. The companies printing money right now are doing it on HBM and advanced DRAM for AI infrastructure. The companies that don't have those products at scale are living in a different market entirely, one where the AI boom is not necessarily a tailwind. That divergence matters for anyone trying to read the semiconductor trade. Samsung's 250-fold chip profit is not a rising tide. It's a very specific allocation of margin to the players who locked in the technology, the manufacturing process, and the customer relationships before the crunch hit. SK Hynix did it earlier and more decisively. Samsung recovered ground with HBM4. Micron is sold out. Everyone else is watching from outside the room. Samsung's full-year 2026 operating profit is now projected by brokerage consensus models to approach 300 trillion won, a figure that would exceed the division's cumulative earnings over the past four decades. Frankly, the more important figure for the next eighteen months isn't the profit Samsung has already posted. It's the supply commitments being signed right now for 2027 and 2028. That's where the AI memory market's power balance will actually be set, and the chipmakers with locked-in HBM capacity at that horizon hold a grip on pricing that no earnings report will fully capture until those contracts mature. **Also read:** [OpenAI confirms it is building a family of devices as Apple sues over alleged hardware secrets theft](https://startupfortune.com/openai-confirms-it-is-building-a-family-of-devices-as-apple-sues-over-alleged-hardware-secrets-theft/) • [Zcash sealed a $1.7 billion shielded pool after a four-year-old bug that could have printed unlimited coins](https://startupfortune.com/zcash-sealed-a-17-billion-shielded-pool-after-a-four-year-old-bug-that-could-have-printed-unlimited-coins/) • [BIOTRONIK Neuro Acquires Soin Neuroscience's Spinal Cord Stimulation Patents](https://startupfortune.com/biotronik-neuro-acquires-soin-neurosciences-spinal-cord-stimulation-patents/)