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Samsung stock jumps 7.2% as HBM4 chips, Nvidia deal expected
Samsung Electronics shares jumped 7.2% to a record high after co-CEO Jun Young Hyun referenced customer feedback saying “Samsung is back” in a New Year’s memo to employees.
The company’s stock performance comes as investors speculate about a potential supply deal with Nvidia and anticipate Samsung’s next generation of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products in 2026.
Samsung has been seeking to regain ground from SK Hynix in the HBM market, after both firms saw momentum from rising memory chip prices in late 2025.
Jun said the company’s HBM4 chips have shown strong competitiveness, and noted positive customer assessments.
The rally in Samsung shares was part of a broader surge in Asian tech stocks, with South Korea’s benchmark index rising 2.3% to close above 4,300 for the first time.
Analysts from Yuanta Securities Korea and IBK Securities raised their price targets for Samsung ahead of its upcoming earnings report.
🔗 Source: Bloomberg
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
Samsung’s HBM4 competitiveness hinges on volume ramp and customer diversification beyond Google
- Nvidia cleared Samsung’s 12-layer HBM3E (a faster variant of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM) for late 2025, though SK Hynix and Micron cover its near-term needs, so volume waits until 2026 1.
- Samsung reportedly supplies over 60% of Google’s HBM shipments through Broadcom (a chipmaker that builds custom silicon for hyperscale data centers) 2. SK Hynix struggles to scale HBM for non-Nvidia buyers, and plans to ramp wafer starts (the number of silicon wafers entering fabrication) by late Q2 2026 aimed at Nvidia as the primary HBM4 customer 2.
- Orders for 2026 HBM are sold out at Samsung 3. The test is whether its HBM4, shown at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2026 with 36 GB and 3.3 TB/s, wins volume orders from Nvidia and expands beyond Google 2. Nvidia asked for 16-Hi (16-die-high) HBM by Q4 2026 4.
Memory equipment and materials suppliers face demand surge from Samsung’s HBM4 production ramp
- Samsung plans to grow HBM4 output on the 1c node technology (a newer generation of DRAM manufacturing) in 2026 5. That push needs advanced lithography, deposition, and etch tools 5. ASML supplies lithography systems, Applied Materials provides deposition tools, and Lam Research handles etch and wafer processing 5.
- Moving to 16-Hi stacks needs thinner dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) wafers, dropping from 50 micrometers to about 30 micrometers 4. That shift opens work for chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) slurry vendors and wafer-thinning tool makers for tighter stacking 4. TC-NCF bonding at Samsung favors suppliers of advanced bonding film and thermal interface materials, and bonding film thickness must shrink from 10 micrometers 4.
