Cutting-edge AI is the force behind soaring memory demand. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google are not slowing their race to develop next-generation "frontier models." The more model performance improves, the more computing resources and data center capacity are required. Nvidia said that "several frontier AI labs have recently been scaling up their operations simultaneously." Morgan Stanley estimates that major cloud providers will invest more than $1.4 trillion (about 1,890 trillion won) next year in infrastructure such as AI data centers. Debate over the pace of AI advancement is growing, but data center investment has not slowed.
That investment fervor is showing up directly in memory prices. According to DRAMeXchange, the average fixed transaction price for DDR4 8-gigabit commodity DRAM for PCs was $25 in August, up 4.2% from a month earlier. The 128Gb multi-level cell (MLC), a commodity NAND product, rose 1.4% to $30.50. Both are record highs on a monthly average basis.
Server products are climbing more steeply. As of the 15th of this month, the fixed transaction price for a DDR5 64GB server module (RDIMM) was $1,500, 5.5 times the $272 of a year earlier. On the spot market, the same product has traded at $3,100. TrendForce expects third-quarter contract prices for server DRAM to rise 13% to 18% from the previous quarter.
Behind the price increases is a shift in supply strategy. The three memory makers — Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Micron — have allocated a substantial share of capacity to high-value products such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM), server DDR5 and enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs), leaving less slack in commodity memory supply. In its second-quarter earnings release, Samsung Electronics also said demand for server memory remains strong on the spread of agentic AI.
Rising memory prices are showing up plainly in earnings. Samsung Electronics overtook Nvidia to rank first in the world in second-quarter operating profit. The semiconductor division alone posted second-quarter revenue of 127.5 trillion won and operating profit of 89.2 trillion won. Virtually all of Samsung's total second-quarter operating profit of 89.5 trillion won came from semiconductors.
Nvidia reported operating profit of $63.734 billion (about 86 trillion won) for the second quarter of fiscal 2027 (May–July 2026). The two companies' reporting periods and accounting standards differ somewhat, but on quarterly profit alone, Samsung's semiconductor business outpaced Nvidia.
There is also a strong chance Samsung will open the era of 100 trillion won in quarterly operating profit for the first time in the third quarter. Consensus estimates for Samsung's third quarter (one-month average) call for revenue of 196.6 trillion won and operating profit of 107.4 trillion won. If realized, it would mark the company's first quarterly operating profit above 100 trillion won since its founding. Should sales of high-margin server DRAM and HBM4 (sixth-generation) grow faster than expected, estimates could rise further.
Rising prices combined with a recovery in market share is another boon for Samsung. According to Counterpoint Research, Samsung's share of global DRAM revenue rose to 38% in the second quarter of this year from 33% in the third quarter of last year. Its HBM revenue share also jumped 12 percentage points to 33% in the second quarter from 21% in the first. Over the same period, SK hynix slipped to 50% from 58%, narrowing the gap between the two from 37 percentage points to 17.
HBM4 is at the center of the chase. Samsung expanded HBM4 supply in the second quarter and shipped samples of HBM4E (seventh generation). Global investment bank UBS forecasts Samsung's HBM share on a bit-shipment basis will surge to 41% in 2027, surpassing SK hynix at 39%. It put Micron at 20%.
If Samsung reclaims with HBM4 the leadership it ceded in HBM3E (fifth generation), the effect of a larger share of high-value products on top of rising commodity DRAM prices could widen its margin improvement. A broad customer base that includes not only Nvidia but also Broadcom and Google is another factor strengthening its pricing power.
Whether Samsung will rank first in the world in operating profit this year is another point of interest. The 370 trillion won estimate for the DS division exceeds by about 7 trillion won the $268.846 billion (about 363 trillion won) fiscal 2027 operating profit forecast for Nvidia compiled by MarketScreener. Direct comparison is limited because the two companies' fiscal years differ, but based on current market estimates alone, Samsung is narrowly ahead.
The surge in earnings is also expected to flow through to employee bonuses. Based on operating profit of 370 trillion won, projected bonuses by business unit are 725 million won for memory, 590 million won for DS common functions and 199 million won for non-memory. For the memory division in particular, that is 125 million won more than the roughly 600 million won projected under an assumption of 300 trillion won in operating profit.
"Past memory upcycles depended heavily on rising commodity product prices, but this time high-value products such as server DRAM and HBM are driving earnings," an industry official said. "How much share Samsung can gain in HBM4, in particular, will be the key variable determining the scale of its profit next year."
