Samsung Eyes 30 Trillion Won Anthropic Deal, Targets 2 Trillion Won Profit Next Year

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items by reader type.

1. Samsung Eyes At Least 30 Trillion Won in Revenue From Anthropic, Targets 2 Trillion Won Profit Next Year With 4nm Process

- Key Summary: If Samsung Electronics wins the order for Anthropic's AI accelerator chips, the initial contract alone would approach Tesla's $16.5 billion (approximately 25 trillion won), with the total scale expected to grow to more than $20 billion (approximately 30 trillion won). With major orders including Tesla's AI chip, Nvidia's Grok3 LPU, and Apple's CIS coming in succession, the Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek campuses and the new fab in Taylor, Texas, are emerging as key production hubs. Korea Investment & Securities forecasts that the non-memory business will turn to profit in the fourth quarter this year and post operating profit in the 2 trillion won range next year, while the global custom AI accelerator market is projected to grow to 53.8 trillion won by 2032. Amid the strengthening trend of big tech supply chain diversification, the fact that Samsung is the only company that can independently handle HBM, foundry, and advanced packaging is cited as the key factor in its order competitiveness.

2. "We Just Wasted Tokens" — Big Tech Scraps "Usage Rankings"

- Key Summary: Amazon scrapped "KiroRank," which ranked employees by usage of its in-house AI code generation tool "Kiro," and shifted to indicators based on the actual usefulness of the code. Meta also discontinued Claudenomics, which tracked token usage of 85,000 employees, while Uber exhausted its annual AI budget in just four months on Anthropic's Claude Code without producing clear productivity gains. Salesforce introduced the concept of Agent Work Unit (AWU), which measures the volume of tasks processed by agents instead of token counts, signaling a paradigm shift in AI performance indicators. Some interpret this as a reaffirmation of the principle that the effectiveness of AI tool adoption should be measured by actual work performance and return on investment (ROI), not token consumption.

3. Trade Ministry Says "Investment," Labor Ministry Says "Redistribution" — Ministers Join Semiconductor Excess Profit Debate

- Key Summary: Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Kim Jung-kwan stated that "the top priority for utilizing corporate profits is productive reinvestment," while Employment and Labor Minister Kim Young-hoon announced a government-led forum to publicly discuss the social redistribution of excess profits, only to provisionally postpone it amid pushback from the business community. With Samsung Electronics and SK hynix (000660.KS) recording combined operating profits approaching 95 trillion won in the first quarter alone, the policy debate over how to handle profits has entered the public discussion stage. Yang Joon-seok, professor at Catholic University, warned that "if the government intervenes in excess profits, it could harm entrepreneurial spirit," while addressing polarization through surplus corporate tax revenues is being mentioned as a realistic alternative. Experts point out that with growing policy uncertainty in the business environment, there is a need to balance reinvestment plans with social contribution strategies.

4. Samyang Corporation (145990.KS) Strengthens Specialty Business With 390 Billion Won Acquisition of Japanese Firm

- Key Summary: Samyang Corporation, a subsidiary of Samyang Group, acquired Japan's fifth-largest fragrance company Soda Aromatic for approximately 41 billion yen (around 390 billion won), laying the groundwork to transform its business structure centered on commodity food ingredients such as sugar and flour into high-value-added specialty products. Soda Aromatic is a leader in dairy, tea, and coffee fragrances with seven production bases in five Asian countries and a global customer network of over 1,000 companies, and the acquisition is evaluated as a key step toward becoming a "comprehensive food solutions company" that designs not only taste and texture but also aroma. As Japan's M&A market has high entry barriers for foreign capital, making it rare for domestic food companies to acquire local firms, this deal carries significance as the group's first M&A of a Japanese company and its first acquisition in the food sector. Samyang Group has been accelerating its global specialty expansion, having successively acquired Verdant, a US, UK, and Germany-based specialty chemicals company, in 2023, followed by Lubrizol Elmendorf last year.