While most of us were busy with the end-of-year rush, Samsung Electronics was busy counting a huge pile of won. Recently, the South Korean tech giant showed off its results from the last quarter, and the numbers are nothing short of jaw-dropping. In the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2025, Samsung got record operating profits as these literally tripled, reaching a record 20.1 trillion won ($13.7 billion) amid the massive AI memory global demand.
This is a classic case of “right place, right time.” As big tech companies compete to build huge AI data centers, they need fast memory chips to run them. This sudden rise in demand has caused a bottleneck in the supply chain, making the simple memory chip the most valuable currency in the industry.
Samsung’s record profits in Q4 2025 thanks to AI memory chips demand
If you think of Samsung as just a smartphone company, these results might surprise you. In reality, the semiconductor division (DS Division) is the true powerhouse. In the final months of 2025, this segment accounted for over 80% of the company’s total earnings.
High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is starring in the show. This component is key for companies like Nvidia to manufacture AI chips. Prices in the market have gone up by 40% to 50% in just one quarter due to high demand. This “hyper-bull” phase has been bigger for Samsung than the boom in the industry in 2018.
Phone division fell a little
However, it wasn’t a victory lap across every department. While the chip business was soaring, the smartphone division (MX) felt a bit of a chill. Profits in the mobile segment dropped significantly as the initial “hype” from 2025’s flagship launches began to fade and competition grew fiercer.
There is also a bit of a catch-22 for Samsung. While they are making a fortune selling memory chips to others, the rising cost of those very same chips makes it more expensive for them to build their own phones. It is a delicate balancing act: celebrating record profits on one hand while managing rising component costs for the next Galaxy on the other.
What is next for 2026?
Samsung isn’t planning to slow down. The company is already shifting its gaze toward “Agentic AI”—a fancy way of saying AI that can proactively help you with tasks—which they plan to debut with the upcoming Galaxy S26 series.
On the hardware side, the race is on to stay ahead of rivals like SK Hynix. Samsung plans to begin mass-producing HBM4 products early this year to ensure they remain the preferred supplier for the world’s AI infrastructure.
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