{"id":352021,"date":"2026-03-18T05:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T05:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/352021\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T05:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T05:02:11","slug":"samsung-ceo-sees-ai-driven-chip-boom-continuing-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/352021\/","title":{"rendered":"Samsung CEO sees AI-driven chip boom continuing in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin<\/p>\n

SUWON, South Korea, March 18 (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics sees strong demand for chips continuing this year, driven by the artificial intelligence<\/a> wave, but rising memory chip prices could hit computer and mobile \u200cshipments, its top executive said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Co-CEO Jun Young-hyun said it is working with key customers to shift from \u200ctraditional annual or quarterly supply agreements to multi-year contracts of three-to-five years to mitigate the effects of cyclical demand fluctuations.<\/p>\n

Many shareholders management after share prices and earnings hit \u200ba record high, a dramatic turnaround from last year when its management apologised for lagging rivals in the AI race.<\/p>\n

He said Samsung was now a key partner with Nvidia<\/a> in AI infrastructure, citing Nvidia\u2019s GTC conference where CEO Jensen Huang announced a foundry partnership with the Korean firm and praised its HBM4 chips.<\/p>\n

Jun said the industry is entering an “unprecedented supercycle,” driven by growing investment in AI infrastructure. But he \u200cwas wary of market concerns about an AI \u2060bubble, while saying power supply constraints were also a major bottleneck for AI datacentres.<\/p>\n

“We expect a favourable business environment due to the increasing demand for AI and the resulting continued shortage of memory supply,” Jun, \u2060who oversees the company’s chip business, said at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Suwon, south of Seoul.<\/p>\n

“However, risk factors still persist, including uncertainties in the global macroeconomic environment such as tariff issues and cost burdens in the set business,” he added, referring to televisions, phones and home \u200bappliances.<\/p>\n

MAJOR \u200bTURNAROUND<\/p>\n

Bottlenecks in global semiconductor supply stemming from robust demand for AI datacentres \u200bhave curbed memory chip supply to industries from cars \u200cand computers to smartphones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Samsung shares skyrocketed to record highs this year and are up 62% since January, outperforming the wider Korean market’s 34% gain and delighting shareholders.<\/p>\n

The performance has been driven by the global memory chip shortage that has allowed it and rivals including SK Hynix and Micron to sharply hike prices. The three companies dominate global memory chip production.<\/p>\n

At last year’s shareholder meeting, Jun apologised for Samsung initially missing out on the artificial intelligence chip market, which had led to a share price and earnings slump, and tried \u200cto appease frustrated shareholders.<\/p>\n

But the situation has since improved, with traditional chip prices \u200bsurging and Samsung narrowing the gap with SK Hynix in the race to \u200bdevelop high bandwidth memory, or HBM, chips.<\/p>\n

“Things cannot be \u200bbetter,” 51-year-old shareholder Oh Bong-gyu said ahead of the meeting on Wednesday, citing Samsung\u2019s stock market rally. “But I \u200cam a little bit worried about Samsung’s labour union \u200band its burden on management.”<\/p>\n

Unions at \u200bSamsung have threatened to disrupt chip production as members vote on a plan to strike in May amid growing frustration among employees over a pay gap with key rivals.<\/p>\n

Jun acknowledged that Samsung lagged rivals on wage competitiveness as sluggish chip \u200bearnings hit performance pay.<\/p>\n

“However, as we have recovered \u200cthe competitiveness of our semiconductor products since last year, the payout of performance bonuses has been on a \u200brecovery trend, and we expect the wage competitiveness gap to narrow,” he said.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin; \u200bWriting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Jamie Freed and Sam Holmes)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Heekyong Yang and Hyunjoo Jin SUWON, South Korea, March 18 (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics sees strong demand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,2103,61,60,85582,6375,80],"class_list":["post-352021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chip","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-memory-chip","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}