What changed
Samsung Electronics expects operating profit of 107.4tn won, or about $80bn, for the three months to the end of September. That would be nine times its result a year earlier and a fourth consecutive quarterly record, with Samsung pointing to demand for memory chips used in AI data centres.
The estimate is preliminary. Full third-quarter results are due at the end of October. Samsung’s latest folding phones, launched in August, are also expected to contribute, though the company has not broken out how much of the increase comes from smartphones rather than chips.
Why it matters
The numbers show where the AI boom is landing in the physical economy: in the factories making the memory that data centres need. Samsung sits alongside SK Hynix and US-based Micron as a major supplier to companies such as Nvidia, so stronger demand is feeding directly into the earnings of the firms that build the hardware beneath AI services.
It also shows why chip valuations have become difficult to read. Samsung and SK Hynix both crossed $1tn in market value earlier in 2026, then fell as investors worried that technology stocks had been priced too aggressively. Record profits can support those valuations, but this forecast is still an estimate, and the final test will come when Samsung publishes its detailed results.
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