Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) posted operating profit approaching 90 trillion won in the second quarter this year, buoyed by a memory chip boom. By overtaking Nvidia, the world's No. 1 artificial intelligence (AI) company, it achieved the highest quarterly operating profit among tech companies, setting an unprecedented record across Korean and global corporate history.
Samsung Electronics said Monday its second-quarter operating profit was estimated at 89.4 trillion won on a preliminary basis. The figure marked an 18-fold increase from a year earlier and far exceeded the consensus estimate (the average forecast of securities firms, 84.7675 trillion won). In particular, it broke the record for the highest earnings ever for a third consecutive quarter, following 20.1 trillion won in the fourth quarter of last year and 57.2 trillion won in the first quarter this year. Revenue also rose 129.3% from a year earlier to 171 trillion won.
With this, Samsung Electronics overtook Nvidia to set a new record for the highest quarterly operating profit in the global tech industry, leaving an unprecedented mark in Korean as well as global corporate history. For quarterly operating profit in the global tech industry, Apple set the record in the October–December 2025 period ($50.85 billion, about 77.83 trillion won), followed by Nvidia in the February–April quarter this year (53.5 billion won, about 81.88 trillion won), and with Monday's earnings release, Samsung Electronics reclaimed the top spot at $58.4 billion based on the day's exchange rate.
Beyond the tech industry, across all companies worldwide, the only one to surpass Samsung Electronics' quarterly operating profit is Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company Aramco (second quarter of 2022, $86.5 billion). In addition, since the second-quarter results reflected a one-time cost of around 15 trillion won in bonus provisions, the actual operating profit excluding this is estimated to have exceeded 100 trillion won.
Excluding the finished products (DX) division's operating profit, estimated to be below 1 trillion won, most of this growth was led by the semiconductor (DS) division. As in the first quarter, this resulted from a surge in prices of Samsung Electronics' flagship memory products, including DRAM, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and NAND flash, driven by soaring AI computing demand from global Big Tech firms in the second quarter. According to market research firm DRAMeXchange, the average price of DRAM (DDR4 8Gb 1Gx8 2133MHz) at the end of the second quarter this year was $21, eight times higher than a year earlier and up 61.5% from $13 at the end of the first quarter this year. NAND (128Gb 16Gx8 MLC) prices also recorded a similar rate of increase.
In the second half of this year, Nvidia is expected to launch its new chip "Vera Rubin," further boosting memory demand. Samsung Electronics' new sixth-generation HBM (HBM4) product, which will be mounted on Vera Rubin, proved its demand by surpassing $1 billion (about 1.53 trillion won) in sales just four months after beginning the world's first mass production shipments in February this year. Vera Rubin also applies NAND-based "Compute Memory eXpansion (CMX)" technology, so NAND demand is also expected to increase. Market research firm TrendForce forecast that memory prices will rise in the 10% range in the third quarter compared with the second quarter.
Following facilities in Pyeongtaek, Yongin and Taylor in the United States, Samsung Electronics has recently decided to build a 400 trillion won semiconductor fab in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, as part of the government's "mega project," strengthening its leadership in the global memory supply. In foundry (contract chip manufacturing) as well, it is pursuing consecutive orders to produce custom chips (ASICs) for Big Tech firms including Tesla, Apple, Meta and Anthropic, seeking to improve earnings.
