Samsung Electronics surged past $1 trillion market capitalization on Wednesday, making it the second Asian company to do so. The South Korean chip giant’s shares rallied as much as 13% in early trading. Incidentally, it pushed its market value to 1,500 trillion won. This followed an overnight surge in United States AI-related stocks that lifted the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to record-high closes.
The rally sent South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index above 7,000 points for the first time in history. The index jumped 6.9% to a record 7,417.54 in afternoon trade. Samsung and SK Hynix together account for 44% of the KOSPI’s total value. Both companies leapt more than 10% each to all-time highs on Wednesday.
“Instead of taking the conventional path of utilizing existing proven designs, Samsung took the leap and adopted the most advanced nodes like the 1c DRAM and 4nm logic process for HBM4,” said Sang Joon Hwang, Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Development at Samsung Electronics. “By leveraging our process competitiveness and design optimization, we are able to secure substantial performance headroom, enabling us to satisfy our customers’ escalating demands for higher performance, when they need them.”
Samsung reported record first-quarter earnings last week. Operating profit surged more than eightfold to 57.2 trillion won while revenue climbed to a record 133.9 trillion Korean won. The company’s first-quarter operating profit topped its full-year 2025 profit of 43.6 trillion won. Sales of high-bandwidth memory chips have boosted Samsung’s profitability. Although the company faces intense competition in the HBM market after losing its early advantage to rival SK Hynix.
Samsung announced in February it had become the world’s first firm to begin mass production of HBM4 chips. The chips represent the sixth and latest generation of high-bandwidth memory technology. They are expected to play a key role in Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin AI architecture which aims to power advanced AI workloads in data centers.
Global investors added a near-record 2.9 trillion won worth of KOSPI shares on Monday. Foreigners led Wednesday’s rally with net purchases of local shares at 1.7 trillion won. Local media cited a deal between Interactive Brokers and Samsung Securities. This will allow United States investors direct access to purchase Korean stocks.
Analysts believe the sharp rally in Samsung Electronics is almost entirely driven by booming AI-related memory demand. The current supply conditions and increasing competitiveness in high-bandwidth memory chips can further push the boundaries.
