Samsung AI Memory Surge: First Half Profit Nearly $91 Billion, Semiconductor Employees Receive 100% Performance Bonus

Samsung Electronics Announces Semiconductor Employees' First-Half Performance Bonus Reaches 100% of Base Salary, AI Memory Super Cycle Drives Storage Chip Division Profits to Nearly $91 Billion.
(Previous: Samsung Announces HBM Yield Rate Breaks 70%! CTO Song Jae-hyuk Calls Next-Gen DRAM to Overtake, Aggressively Chasing SK Hynix)
(Background: Samsung Reports Q3 DRAM Will Rise Another 20%! Three Increases in One Year, AI Crowding Out Capacity Spills Over to Phones, PCs)

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• AI Memory Super Cycle Drives Profit Surge
• Average Employee Salary Nears $340k
• Competition: SK Hynix Stock Falls Nearly 5%
• Reflection on Taiwan: Memory Battle Determines Global AI Landscape

Samsung Electronics announced on July 6 that semiconductor business employees will receive a performance bonus of up to 100% of their base salary for the first half of 2026. This generous bonus is on par with the level from the second half of last year and will be paid out on July 8 (Wednesday).

AI Memory Super Cycle Drives Profit Surge

This bonus payout comes as the semiconductor industry enters an unprecedented AI super cycle. Shipments of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) continue to climb, driving Samsung's storage chip division revenue to record highs. According to Samsung's Q1 2026 earnings report released via its Global Newsroom, the memory business has become the group's largest profit engine.

Analysts estimate that the operating profit of Samsung's storage chip division alone reached approximately 140 trillion Korean won (about $91 billion) in the first half. If this trend holds, full-year operating profit could approach 350 trillion Korean won. Samsung will announce its Q2 earnings guidance on Tuesday, July 7.

Average Employee Salary Nears $340k

Citing internal Samsung sources, Tom's Hardware estimates that the total bonus pool is approximately $26.6 billion. On average, each semiconductor employee could receive a performance bonus of about $339k (approximately NT$340k), equivalent to double their base salary.

In comparison to Taiwanese peers, MediaTek, which produces daily, had earnings per share of about NT$1.82 in Q1 2026. Although TSMC has not disclosed its bonus ratio, industry sources indicate that its engineers receive year-end bonuses of about 3-4 months' salary.

Competition: SK Hynix Stock Falls Nearly 5%

On the day the bonus news was announced, South Korea's KOSPI index briefly expanded its decline to 3%, with Samsung Electronics falling 1.6% and SK Hynix dropping over 5%. The market interpreted this as "buy the rumor, sell the fact"—expectations of AI memory price increases had already been priced in, with funds shifting to profit-taking. This bonus also indirectly confirms that the profitability momentum of South Korea's semiconductor industry far exceeds market expectations.

Reflection on Taiwan: Memory Battle Determines Global AI Landscape

Samsung and SK Hynix together control about 70% of the global HBM market share. These two Korean giants effectively dominate the memory supply chain for NVIDIA GPUs. As a global chip manufacturing hub, Taiwan's AI chip assembly and testing processes are highly dependent on these two suppliers. The news of Samsung's HBM yield rate breaking 70% (in May), combined with the third consecutive DRAM price increase in Q3 (in June), indicates that the supply-demand imbalance for AI memory will persist through the second half of 2026.