Samsung posts record profit, surpasses Nvidia as AI memory boom lifts chip business

Samsung Electronics reported record quarterly earnings, with surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips helping the company to outstrip Nvidia in quarterly operating profit and highlighting the growing role of memory makers in the AI supply chain.The preliminary operating profit of the company for the April-June quarter reached 89.4 trillion won ($64.5 billion), a significant increase from 4.7 trillion won a year ago and beating market expectations. Quarterly revenue also rose to a record 171 trillion won ($123.4 billion) buoyed by continued momentum in its semiconductor business.Samsung has overtaken the previously reported quarterly operating income of Nvidia to become the most profitable technology company for the quarter, according to the latest earnings. The results also beat Samsung’s own past record for operating profit, highlighting the financial impact of booming AI infrastructure investments worldwide.Also read: Samsung eyes 19-fold Q2 profit surge on AI memory chip demand The company’s growth was significantly driven by demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), server DRAM and NAND flash memory, which have become critical for AI servers and large-scale data centres powering generative AI applications.Special employee bonuses agreed with its labour union are included in the reported figures, Samsung said. These payments likely represented a large part of the quarterly expenses, analysts said, implying that underlying operating performance may have been even stronger.The company has now generated more operating profit during the latest quarter than it earned across the combined period of 2023, 2024 and 2025, reflecting the rapid transformation of the semiconductor industry amid accelerating AI adoption.