According to reports from TrendForce and several other media sources, due to the growing demand for 4nm chip manufacturing processes by HBM4, Samsung Electronics' wafer foundry and system-on-chip (System LSI) business saw its consolidated operating loss narrow by 42% year-on-year in 2026.

HBM4 adopts a vertical stacking architecture of multiple DRAM chips. The underlying substrate is responsible for signal control and data scheduling, mainly serving high-performance chips such as the AI accelerator and GPU. It provides far superior bandwidth and energy efficiency compared to traditional GDDR.

The lowest-level logic chips in the HBM4 stack structure, base and die, utilize a 4nm manufacturing process. With the rapid growth in market demand, Samsung is accelerating the increase in related production capacity. Samsung commenced mass production of HBM4 in February this year, delivered samples to customers in May, and in the third quarter, HBM4, revenue is expected to increase by more than three times compared to the previous quarter.

Reports indicate that HBM4 accounts for more than 60% of the total revenue of HBM in the second half of the year, and with it, the production volume of wafers is also on the rise, directly driving the revenue from wafer foundry services.

HBM4 There is strong demand for wafers and advanced node orders, so Samsung no longer needs to accept low-price contracts in order to improve capacity utilization. In July, Samsung raised the prices for new 4nm orders, with some advanced node prices increasing by 10% to 15%.

In terms of external orders, in July, Samsung signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadcom ( Broadcom ), planning to exceed a cooperation scale of $200 billion (Note from IT: the current exchange rate is approximately 1.34 trillion yuan) by 2030. This cooperation covers the supply of HBM4 / HBM4E , as well as processes below 2nm and advanced packaging. In the second quarter, large cloud service providers and customers such as AI and HPC have been secured for 2nm projects, with customers already initiating product design.

According to securities data, the consolidated operating loss from Samsung's wafer foundry and system-on-chip businesses is expected to narrow by 41.8% year-on-year, from last year's 6.74 trillion Korean won (approximately 33.417 billion yuan at current exchange rates) to this year's 3.92 trillion Korean won (approximately 19.435 billion yuan at current exchange rates).