Samsung increases spending to catch up in the AI chip market.

Chip business Samsung continues to invest a lot of money in the improvement of high-performance AI chips

2025-02-04 Source: dpa 1 min Reading Time

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The electronics group Samsung is trying to make up for its lag in artificial intelligence chips with continued high spending. The company intends to keep its research and operational spending at a high level, as it announced on Friday.

Samsung looks back on a successful business year 2024—but mainly thanks to its network division.(Image: freely licensed / Pixabay) — Samsung looks back on a successful business year 2024—but mainly thanks to its network division.
(Image: freely licensed / Pixabay)

Last year, total investments amounted to 53.6 trillion South Korean Won (38.2 billion USD), slightly higher than the previous year. Spending for memory technology is expected to remain at the high level of the previous year in 2025, the management explained.

Meanwhile, the company achieved the second highest revenue in its history in 2024 with around 301 trillion won (231.5 billion USD). The profit attributable to shareholders roughly doubled compared to the previous year from 14.5 trillion to 33.6 trillion won (11.2 to 25.9 billion USD). However, in the fourth quarter, the company experienced weaker demand. Additionally, increased investments eroded operating profit. These are the final annual figures for the year 2024. The Koreans had already presented preliminary figures at the beginning of January.

Samsung aims to reduce dependency with HBM chips as well

Samsung's chip division earned 2.9 trillion (2.2 billion USD) Won in operating business in the final quarter, less than analysts expected. The company still exceeded overall expectations thanks to its network division. On the Seoul stock exchange, Samsung's share lost nearly two percent in value by the end of trading.

Samsung is trying to reduce its dependency on the business with conventional DRAM and NAND chips for PCs and mobile devices. These are standard memory chips (DRAM) and storage semiconductors, such as for SSD hard drives and USB sticks (NAND).

Instead, the company is focusing more on the more lucrative DRAM chips for servers and HBM chips (high bandwidth memory), which are needed among other things in AI data centers. Here, the company is trying to keep up with rivals SK Hynix and Micron. In the business with smartphones, televisions, and other devices, Samsung is battling increasing competition, especially from China.

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