First time in three years! Samsung foundry turned profitable in June, with 4nm process yield rate improved to about 80%.

Samsung Electronics' foundry business has finally received a turning point signal after years of losses.

According to South Korean semiconductor industry sources, Samsung Electronics' foundry business division achieved a monthly profit in June this year, marking the first monthly profit for the division since 2023. The continuous expansion of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) base die shipments, combined with a significant improvement in 4nm process yield, jointly drove this turnaround.

This improvement momentum has led to optimism within Samsung regarding achieving a quarterly profit turnaround in Q3. At the same time, the company's customer layout in the AI chip foundry field is also accelerating—following the Tesla AI6 chip order, Groq chip production and potential cooperation with Meta and Anthropic have surfaced, further heating up market expectations for the recovery of Samsung's foundry business.

Monthly Turnaround to Profit, Q3 Expected to See Quarterly Breakeven

Samsung Electronics' foundry business division achieved a monthly profit in June this year, the first since 2023. The division had long been under pressure—problems such as poor advanced process yield, loss of major customers, and low capacity utilization intertwined, leading to continuously expanding losses. Samsung does not separately disclose the financial data of the foundry business division, but market estimates put the combined operating loss of foundry and System LSI at approximately 2.5 trillion Korean won in 2023, expanding to 5.3 trillion Korean won in 2024, and further rising to about 6 trillion Korean won in 2025.

For Q2 as a whole, April and May were still in a loss state, so a quarterly turnaround is difficult to confirm. However, given that June's profit was not due to one-time settlement but from sustained contributions of increased capacity utilization and improved process yield, Samsung internally judges that the likelihood of a quarterly profit turnaround in Q3 is relatively high.

HBM4 Boosts 4nm Utilization, Yield Improvement Reduces Unit Cost

The core driving force behind this monthly turnaround lies in the dual improvements of expanded HBM Base Die shipments and 4nm process yield.

The HBM Base Die is a logic chip located at the bottom of the DRAM stack, responsible for signal interaction with the GPU, and is produced on Samsung's own foundry lines. An increase in HBM production will simultaneously drive up the Base Die wafer input, thereby improving the utilization rate of advanced process lines. In particular, the Base Die of HBM4 uses a 4nm process, creating a continuous replenishment effect for this line. Samsung Electronics took the lead globally in mass-producing and commercially shipping HBM4 in February this year, and in May delivered HBM4E 12-layer stacked samples to global customers.

The foundry business is characterized by a high proportion of fixed costs such as depreciation, labor, and maintenance expenses. An increase in repetitive shipments helps improve equipment utilization and reduce unit costs. Meanwhile, according to industry insiders, Samsung's 4nm process yield has now improved to about 80%. The higher yield means more chips can be shipped for the same wafer input, reducing scrapping and rework costs. From April to May, the initial costs of capacity expansion and process stabilization pressures had not yet dissipated; entering June, the growth in Base Die volume and the improvement in 4nm yield simultaneously took effect, pushing the monthly profit and loss into positive territory.

Return of Major Customers, AI Chip Supply Chain Diversification Brings New Opportunities

The return of monthly profit coincides with an improvement in the foundry order structure. Samsung Electronics' foundry won the Tesla AI6 chip order last year, and recently took on the production of AI inference chips based on the Groq architecture announced by NVIDIA. In addition, Meta and Anthropic have also been mentioned by industry insiders as potential partners for Samsung in foundry for their self-developed AI chips, further heating up market expectations for Samsung's foundry recovery.

As AI training and inference demands grow rapidly in tandem, TSMC's advanced process and advanced packaging capacity have become highly saturated. Large tech companies looking to reduce their reliance on NVIDIA are expanding their self-developed AI chip layouts while also seeking to break the single-supplier dependence on TSMC. Against this backdrop, Samsung, with its 2nm advanced process layout, HBM Base Die capacity, and the construction of a US-based production facility, is gradually becoming a highly noticed alternative supply chain option.

Despite signs of improvement in fundamentals, the gap between Samsung's foundry and TSMC remains vast. According to data from market research firm TrendForce, in Q1 2025, TSMC ranked first with a 72.3% share of the global foundry market, while Samsung ranked second with 6.5%. Compared to the same period last year, TSMC's share rose from 67.6% by 4.7 percentage points, while Samsung's fell from 7.7% by 1.2 percentage points to 6.5%, widening the gap from 59.9 percentage points to 65.8 percentage points.

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