Samsung Electronics is expected to report a massive second-quarter profit jump as artificial intelligence demand continues to tighten the global memory chip market, pushing prices higher and lifting the world’s largest memory chipmaker into another record quarter.
Samsung Heads Toward Another Record Quarter
The expected numbers show how strongly the AI boom is feeding into memory chip earnings.
Reuters reported that Samsung is likely to flag an operating profit of 86 trillion won, or $56.35 billion, for the April-to-June quarter, based on an LSEG SmartEstimate from 30 analysts.
The projected surge reflects more than a short-term recovery.
InvestingLive reported that the shortage is being fuelled by demand for AI inference infrastructure that is outpacing global supply growth.
AI Demand Is No Longer Just About HBM
High-bandwidth memory remains central to the AI chip race, but analysts say the demand surge is spreading across broader memory categories.
Reuters reported that Samsung’s growth has been driven not only by high-bandwidth memory but also by stronger demand for conventional DRAM and NAND products.
InvestingLive reported that agentic AI systems, which perform more complex multi-step tasks, require additional memory and storage capacity beyond earlier AI training-focused applications.
Samsung’s customer base also places it at the center of the AI supply chain.
Samsung supplies memory chips to Nvidia, Google and Apple, while Citi Research said DRAM and NAND average selling prices rose 44% and 53% quarter-on-quarter, respectively, in the second quarter.
Memory Stocks Ride the AI Rally
The memory shortage has also reshaped market valuations. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron shares have soared 158%, 273% and 242%, respectively, this year, pushing all three companies’ market valuations above $1 trillion.
That matters because AI infrastructure is no longer only boosting chip designers. It is also lifting companies that make the memory and storage needed to run AI models after they are trained, especially as inference workloads expand across cloud services, agentic systems and enterprise AI tools.
Bonus Costs Could Complicate the Headline Number
Samsung’s strong chip backdrop does not remove all uncertainty. Analysts warned second-quarter earnings could fall short of consensus if Samsung books a larger-than-expected provision for employee bonuses.
The bonus issue follows a labor agreement. Samsung averted a large-scale strike in late May by reaching a wage deal allocating 10.5% of the semiconductor division’s operating profit to special bonuses for chip employees.
AI Spending Remains the Biggest Risk
The larger question is whether AI infrastructure spending can keep rising at the same pace. JPMorgan flagged concerns over whether AI memory’s share of cloud service providers’ capital expenditure, estimated at 52% this year and expected to exceed 70% next year, would be sustainable.
For now, Samsung’s expected profit surge shows how deeply AI demand is transforming the memory business. The company’s next challenge is proving that today’s record earnings are not only the result of a shortage, but part of a longer AI-driven cycle.
