Samsung Stock Hits $1 Trillion Market Cap After Record Q1 Earnings

TLDR

• Samsung stock surged more than 15% in local trading, pushing its market cap past $1 trillion — only the second Asian company after TSMC to hit that mark.
• The rally followed record Q1 results with operating profit up more than eightfold to ₩57.2 trillion ($39 billion).
• AI demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and a shortage of DRAM and NAND are driving the gains.
• A Bloomberg report that Apple is exploring chip production talks with Samsung and Intel added to the buying momentum.
• SK Hynix also jumped more than 10%, helping push South Korea’s Kospi index above 7,000 for the first time.

Samsung’s stock is on track for its biggest single-day gain on record after blowout Q1 earnings and a wave of AI-driven demand sent investors rushing in.

The stock jumped more than 15% in local trading on Wednesday, crossing the $1 trillion market cap mark in the process. Samsung is now only the second East Asian company to reach that valuation, after TSMC.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., SMSD.L

The move comes a week after Samsung reported first-quarter operating profit of ₩57.2 trillion — more than eight times higher than a year ago. Revenue came in at a record ₩133.9 trillion. That quarterly profit alone topped Samsung’s full-year 2025 profit of ₩43.6 trillion.

A Bloomberg report also added fuel to the fire. Apple has reportedly held early talks with both Samsung and Intel about producing chips for its devices in the United States. That would be a notable shift away from its long-standing reliance on TSMC.

SK Hynix, Samsung’s closest rival in the memory chip space, also surged more than 10% on Wednesday. The combined gains helped push South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index above 7,000 for the first time ever — a level nobody had reached before.

AI Hunger Driving Memory Shortfall

Morningstar analyst Yu Jing Jie put it plainly: there is a massive shortage of DRAM and NAND chips right now because AI systems are memory-hungry. New semiconductor capacity typically takes two to three years to come online, meaning supply is likely to stay tight for a while.

That’s good news for Samsung’s margins. Rolf Bulk from The Futurum Group said high memory prices and strong earnings are likely to remain supported even as new factories ramp up across the industry over the next several years.

Customer feedback on Samsung’s latest HBM4 chips has also been positive, according to Bulk. HBM4 is the sixth and most current generation of high-bandwidth memory and is expected to play a central role in Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin AI architecture.

Samsung said in February it became the first company to begin mass production of HBM4 chips, with deliveries already going to undisclosed customers.

Samsung vs. SK Hynix

SK Hynix still leads the HBM market with an estimated 55% share. Samsung holds around 25%. But Bulk said investors are less worried about that gap than they used to be, because conventional DRAM profitability has recently overtaken HBM margins.

Elsewhere in the chip space, Micron jumped 11%, AMD rose more than 16% in after-hours trading after a strong Q1 earnings beat, and Intel gained nearly 13%.

Analyst Chaiwon Lee at Life Asset Management noted that Samsung trades at a 12-month forward P/E of around six times — cheap compared to TSMC at roughly 25 times and Micron at around 10 times. He flagged risks including rising competition from China and the potential for an AI demand slowdown, but said the valuation gap suggests room to run.

Samsung’s stock was also on course for a record high as of Wednesday’s session, per FactSet data.

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