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According to a report by South Korea's "JoongAng Ilbo," a statement obtained from a former head of equipment investment at Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), who has a background at Samsung Electronics, reveals that the former CEO of CXMT, Wang Ningguo, summoned the Korean team, including the individual in question, from October to December 2016. He demanded they bring back Samsung Electronics' Process Recipe Plan (PRP) and equipment information, threatening to report them to the South Korean government if they failed to do so, and warned them to verify their connections and not to lie. The individual stated that they felt scared at the time. The report mentioned that CXMT's management referred to Samsung Electronics as "Huangshan."After working at Samsung Electronics for 28 years, the individual joined CXMT and was prosecuted for allegedly leaking and using Samsung's 1.6 trillion won investment in the world’s first 18-nanometer DRAM process without authorization. In April of this year, they were sentenced to seven years in prison in the first trial and are currently in the second trial. The PRP includes the sequence of about 600 steps in DRAM manufacturing, equipment, condition values, and the companies and models of the equipment. Park, a former process design engineer at Samsung, hand-copied the relevant content into a 12-page notebook in September 2016 and brought it out, and is currently under an Interpol Red Notice.During the court hearing, the individual stated that there was a claim made during communications with the Chinese side that investment would not be provided to CXMT if they could not produce the 18-nanometer process. They later learned that the other party had wanted the technology from the very beginning, and CXMT initially had no plans to develop it independently. The pressure mentioned occurred before a meeting to prepare for the investment application. CXMT was established in 2016 with an investment of 14.4 billion yuan from Hefei Industrial Investment, a subsidiary of the Hefei municipal government, and had not been profitable for about 10 years, achieving its first annual profit last year with a net profit of 7.1 billion yuan.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung has invested $1 billion in Helix Digital, an AI infrastructure company backed by KKR and Nvidia. This investment will bring Helix Digital's total capital commitment to over $11 billion.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang will meet again with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-Yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-Won in New York on September 28 local time, about two months after the three met in San Francisco in July. According to business insiders on the 27th, Lee Jae-Yong and Chey Tae-Won plan to attend the Korean Association's annual dinner at 6 PM that evening in New York, where Jensen Huang will attend as this year's Van Fleet Award recipient. Samsung Electronics is advancing its cooperation with NVIDIA.Topics of interest in the industry include high bandwidth memory. Reports indicate that Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division Vice Chairman Choi Yong-Hyun met with Jensen Huang during his visit to Korea in June, where they discussed long-term cooperation on next-generation high bandwidth memory such as HBM4E and HBM5. The New York meeting may also involve wafer foundry services and advanced packaging, with discussions on next-generation wafer foundry cooperation also taking place during the June talks.

According to a report by ZDNet Korea on September 28, Samsung Electronics is accelerating the construction of the first mass production line (Ph1) at the Pyeongtaek Fifth Campus (P5) and is discussing with major equipment manufacturers to move the target for Ph1 equipment installation from the originally planned third quarter of next year to the second quarter of next year. P5 is the next-generation semiconductor production base aimed to be operational by 2028, and the construction of the Ph1 cleanroom began in the third quarter of this year.Samsung Electronics had previously advanced the completion of the P5 Ph1 cleanroom, originally scheduled for early next year, by about six months, so the equipment installation is expected around the third quarter of next year. Industry insiders say that the start time for equipment installation is planned to be moved up from July to August next year to around May to June next year; others have indicated that Samsung has even proposed to deliver equipment in the first quarter of next year for temporary storage at other locations, showing a strong willingness to invest early.Discussions on the investment for the second phase of P5 (Ph2) are also progressing. Currently, Ph1 is more likely to be built as a DRAM and HBM production line, while Ph2 is more likely to be built as an advanced NAND production line, including the tenth generation (V10). Equipment industry insiders say that formal purchase orders have not yet been placed, but Samsung has discussed building Ph2 as a NAND production line with partners, and due to the long equipment delivery cycle, they are requesting to prepare relevant components in advance. Reports indicate that large global tech companies are increasing orders for high-performance DRAM and NAND for AI infrastructure, while storage companies like Samsung have limited production capacity. Samsung stated during the second quarter earnings call in July that unmet demand this year will extend into next year, and the supply shortage next year will be more severe than this year, with shortages expected to continue until 2028.

According to a report by ZDNet Korea, Samsung Electronics is adjusting its next-generation DRAM strategy by incorporating the previously project-based B1b into its official roadmap, naming it the first DRAM D0a below 10 nanometers. Previously, D0a referred to vertical transistor DRAM, and this product is now classified separately as D0a-V. This renaming aims to accelerate the introduction of advanced packaging in general DRAM.B1b will manufacture storage cells and peripheral driver circuits on different wafers before bonding them together, using wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding and directly connecting through copper interconnects. The currently commercialized DRAM is 1c, which is the 6th generation 10 nanometer level, with a line width of about 11 to 12 nanometers; the next generation 1d is the 7th generation 10 nanometer level, with a line width of about 10 to 11 nanometers, considered effectively the last 10 nanometer level product, with the related line width being a marketing term rather than an actual physical size. Vertical transistors can arrange transistors within the cell vertically, reducing the cell area from 6F² to 4F², but they need to address high aspect ratio etching and leakage current, making development more challenging. Wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding has already been mass-produced in CMOS image sensors and high-stacking NAND.Samsung Electronics is evaluating the use of B1b for the 8th generation high bandwidth memory HBM5. HBM5 is expected to be mass-produced around 2029, aiming to increase operating speed by more than 50% compared to HBM4E. Industry estimates suggest that D0a DRAM based on B1b will be commercially available in about two years, with specific mass production investment schedules likely to be determined by mid-next year.

According to Money Today on September 21, Samsung Electronics is advancing the expansion of advanced process capacity in wafer foundry due to the growth of the HBM market. To meet the rising demand for HBM4 base chips, it is evaluating the expansion of its 4-nanometer process. Samsung's HBM4 consists of 10-nanometer 6th generation (1c) DRAM core chips and 4-nanometer logic base chips, with the base chips responsible for high-speed data exchange with AI accelerators such as GPUs.Unlike SK Hynix, which uses TSMC's 12-nanometer process for HBM4 base chips, Samsung employs its own 4-nanometer process. This production line is operating at full capacity and has taken on orders from companies like Nvidia and Groq for 3 LPU, and the company has recently raised its prices for new 4-nanometer orders and HBM4 base chips. Samsung expects HBM4 revenue in the third quarter to increase more than threefold quarter-on-quarter, with HBM4 accounting for significantly more than 60% of HBM revenue in the second half of the year. The additional expansion at P4 in Pyeongtaek will mostly be used for 1c DRAM for HBM, with more than half of the wafer foundry's 4-nanometer capacity allocated to HBM4 base chips.HBM4E also uses 4-nanometer base chips, and Samsung provided samples to customers in May. The company is also evaluating the construction of a new 2-nanometer production line for HBM5, aiming for a GAA structure 2-nanometer process and increasing TSV density to improve operating speed by more than 50% compared to HBM4E. Samsung started the first generation of 2-nanometer mass production in the second half of last year and is advancing the second generation of products in the second half of this year. Citigroup expects global HBM bit demand to reach 75.2 billion Gb next year, a year-on-year increase of 62%, with supply around 59.4 billion Gb and a gap of about 21%.

According to Digital Asset, global payment company Stripe has added support for Samsung Pay on the Android side for its cryptocurrency fiat purchase service Crypto Onramp in the React Native SDK version 0.75.0, covering payment configuration, availability checks, payment method collection, and integration examples.Android applications developed with React Native can access Samsung Pay, allowing users to purchase cryptocurrency using fiat currency through this payment method. Previously, the service supported payment methods such as credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and ACH bank transfers.

According to a report by Seoul Economic Daily, Samsung Electronics plans to increase the production of the sixth-generation high bandwidth memory HBM4 and the seventh-generation HBM4E, among other HBM4 series, by at least more than double compared to this year. The company intends to outsource the cleaning volume of glass substrates required for thinning HBM DRAM from 20,000 pieces per month this year to 50,000 pieces per month next year, an increase of 2.5 times compared to this year. Last year, the monthly demand for these substrates was about 10,000 pieces, which has already doubled this year compared to last year.The HBM4 and HBM4E that Samsung Electronics is focusing on expanding production are primarily high-stacking products with 12 layers or more. The company began mass production and shipment of HBM4 using sixth-generation 10nm (1c) DRAM and 4nm process-based chips in February this year, and provided 12-layer samples of HBM4E to customers such as Nvidia in May. The industry expects that, based on monthly wafer input, Samsung Electronics' HBM production capacity will increase from about 180,000 pieces this year to about 250,000 pieces next year, an increase of nearly 40%; the shipment proportion of the HBM4 series may rise from about 40% this year to about 80% next year.

Samsung Electronics hired former Director of the Foreign Exchange System Division of the Ministry of Finance and Economy, Lee Hee-kun, for its IR team as an executive last month. Lee Hee-kun has held positions such as Director of the Foreign Exchange System Division and Director of the Capital Market Policy Division, responsible for foreign exchange systems and overseas investment responses. In April this year, he participated in the work of including South Korea in the World Government Bond Index and received special recognition. He is expected to be responsible for responding to overseas investors and the global capital market.SK Hynix hired former Director of the Strategic Economic Division of the Ministry of Finance and Economy, Jeong Yu-jin, as the Vice President under the Communications Division last month. Jeong Yu-jin has served as the Director of the Climate and Environment Budget Division, Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, Director of the Foreign Exchange System Division, and Director of the Foreign Exchange Fund Division. Both companies are advancing production investments in the United States, with Samsung Electronics planning to invest $37 billion to build a foundry in Taylor, Texas, and SK Hynix planning to invest $4 billion to build an advanced packaging factory in Indiana.

According to Reuters, citing informed sources, Changxin Storage (CXMT) is preparing to enter the NAND flash memory chip market, expanding beyond its core DRAM business and competing with Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron, and Yangtze Memory Technologies.Changxin Storage plans to establish a NAND flash research and production line at its new factory in Beijing and set up a research institute in Beijing that includes NAND development projects. The company has discussed related plans with clients, including a startup that intends to procure chips for AI systems and supercomputers. The timeline for the operation of the R&D line or large-scale commercial manufacturing remains unclear.The global storage shortage is driven by demand for AI servers and is expected to last at least until 2027. Manufacturers prioritize DRAM and HBM spending, limiting the increase in NAND capacity. Changxin Storage raised 57.92 billion yuan in its IPO in July. Yangtze Memory Technologies was placed on the entity list in 2022.

Samsung Electronics has started prototype production of AI5 chips for Tesla at its foundry in Taylor, Texas. Due to the surge in demand for AI chips, Samsung has accelerated prototype output for yield verification, planning to complete mass production validation by the end of this year and to supply fully next year.

On September 16, local time, the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) announced that it has launched a patent infringement investigation into certain electronic devices equipped with specific audio technology. The subjects of the investigation include Samsung Electronics and its U.S. subsidiaries, Apple Inc., and Google LLC. The initiation of the investigation itself does not constitute a determination of patent infringement.The investigation is based on a complaint submitted by BoomCloud 360 Inc. on August 14 and supplemented on August 31. The complainant alleges that the relevant devices infringe its patents when imported into and sold in the United States, violating Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, and requests that the ITC issue a limited exclusion order and a cease-and-desist order.The case will be assigned to an administrative law judge for a hearing on the evidence, which will make a preliminary determination on whether Section 337 has been violated, followed by a final decision after review by the ITC. The ITC will set a target date for completing the investigation within 45 days of the filing. The relief order will take effect immediately and become a final order after 60 days, unless the U.S. Trade Representative disapproves it for policy reasons within 60 days.

The South Korean Deputy Prime Minister stated on Wednesday that South Korea must continue to advance artificial intelligence development without pause or delay, clearly expressing its stance in the global discussion about the pace of this technology's development.South Korea is home to memory chip companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and is also one of the main beneficiaries of the artificial intelligence data center boom, with related demand driving vigorous procurement of the country's semiconductors and hardware. The country's population is approximately 52 million, and it cannot slow its progress in the direction proposed by Anthropic and OpenAI leaders, as suggested by American artificial intelligence model developers.

Citigroup analysts pointed out that leading memory chip manufacturers are expected to benefit from the structural changes in the development of artificial intelligence. The agency anticipates that continuous learning will drive a significant increase in memory demand, leading to a supply shortage in the market that will continue until 2031. Continuous learning strengthens models by training on new tasks and knowledge, which will create a sustained demand for model updates and access to historical data, driving the storage usage of products such as HBM, server DDR5, and eSSD.Citigroup expects HBM bit demand to grow by 62% year-on-year to 75.2 billion gigabits in 2027, and by 69% year-on-year to 127 billion gigabits in 2028. Global DRAM demand is expected to grow by 30% and 35% year-on-year in 2027 and 2028, respectively, while supply is expected to grow by only 19% and 22% during the same period, resulting in supply-demand ratios of -8.7% and -9.7%. In terms of NAND, demand is expected to grow by 29% and 33% year-on-year in 2027 and 2028, respectively, exceeding supply growth of 21% and 25%, with supply-demand ratios of -6.1% and -5.5%.Citigroup's preferred storage targets include Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron, Sandisk, and Kioxia, corresponding to the logic of storage shortages brought about by continuous learning, demand for HBM and server DDR5, DRAM supply shortages, and tightening supply of high-density eSSD and NAND.

According to Techstartups, Dutch AI chip startup Euclyd has completed over 200 million euros (approximately 231 million dollars) in Series A funding, led jointly by Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund, and Innovation Industries.Euclyd was founded in 2024 by Bernardo Kastrup and Atul Sinha, headquartered in Eindhoven, focusing on the field of AI inference, aiming to replace GPU solutions with self-developed chips and memory architectures to reduce AI inference energy consumption and per Token costs. Former ASML CEO Peter Wennink will serve as the chairman of the company's board.

Interface News has exclusively learned from the supply chain that Apple has accepted Samsung Electronics' quote for storage chips in the first quarter of 2027: DRAM is close to $2.0 per Gb, and NAND flash is close to $0.33 per Gb, an increase of 30%-40% compared to the quotes in the third quarter of this year.Interface News has reached out to Apple for confirmation regarding this news, but there has been no response at the time of publication.

According to the Chosun Ilbo report on September 15, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix's third-quarter operating profit consensus has been raised again within three months. Based on reports from major brokerages and overseas investment banks, Samsung Electronics' estimated operating profit for the third quarter is approximately 114 trillion won, an increase of 12.2836 trillion won (12%) from 101.9052 trillion won three months ago, and a 28% increase from 89.4 trillion won in the second quarter. SK Hynix's estimate for the third quarter is 78.8035 trillion won, a 4% increase from 75.7249 trillion won three months ago, and a 30% increase from 60.5426 trillion won in the second quarter.TrendForce expects the fixed transaction prices for general DRAM in the third quarter to rise by 13% to 18% quarter-on-quarter, while NAND flash is expected to rise by 10% to 15%. The securities industry is paying attention to Samsung Electronics' HBM4 revenue share, which expanded from 5% in the first quarter to about 35% in the second quarter, along with improvements in yield rates. SK Hynix maintains the largest market share in HBM, but improvements in Samsung's HBM4 mass production may dilute its supply premium. Citigroup Securities has lowered SK Hynix's third-quarter operating profit estimate from 76.7 trillion won to 74 trillion won due to the strengthening of the won. Micron will announce its fourth-quarter results for fiscal year 2026 (June to August) on the 30th, with revenue guidance of $49 billion to $51 billion.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Qualcomm are jointly developing organic bridge technology for 2.1D packaging, with related development and validation ongoing for over a year. The organic bridge is similar to the silicon bridge used in Intel's EMIB but is made with organic materials and produced using substrate processes to connect multiple semiconductor chips within the same package.Samsung Electro-Mechanics embeds the organic bridge in FC-BGA substrates with grooves, connecting Qualcomm chips and evaluating performance and reliability. Qualcomm is considering using it for large multi-chip semiconductors in data centers and applied for related patents in October 2024. Samsung Electro-Mechanics is also developing this technology in parallel with several other customers.The organic bridge aims for 5 to 7 layers of redistribution layers, with line widths and spacings of 1.5 to 2 microns, and vias of 4 to 5 microns, achieving a pattern density of 500 to 1000 per millimeter between chips. Samsung Electro-Mechanics is self-manufacturing and evaluating samples while also assessing external suppliers and collaborating with Samsung Electronics' wafer foundry for packaging evaluations.

The Bank of Korea recently reviewed the reasons for the fluctuations of the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) in the "Monetary and Credit Policy Report for September 2026." The report shows that as the KOSPI continues to rise, the contribution rates of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to the index's increase have rapidly increased.Especially during the process in June this year when the KOSPI surged from 8000 points to 9000 points, the contribution rates of these two stocks to the index's rise reached as high as 99%.

According to South Korea's "JoongAng Ilbo," China's semiconductor industry is organized through collaboration among the central government, local governments, state-owned financial institutions, and enterprises, forming a system for fundraising, factory construction, and infrastructure support. The China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund has a first phase of 138.7 billion RMB, a second phase of 204 billion RMB, and a third phase of 344 billion RMB, totaling 686.7 billion RMB, with investments in companies such as SMIC, Hua Hong Semiconductor, and Yangtze Memory Technologies.Changxin Memory, established for 10 years, has risen to fourth in global DRAM market share, with a net loss of 21.13 billion RMB over the past three years, while R&D and equipment investments during the same period reached 185.2 billion RMB, with Hefei's state-owned capital providing about 80% of the funding for early projects. South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are responsible for investments, employment, technology development, and support for partners. The South Korean government plans to guide 622 trillion KRW in private investment by 2047 and provide 17 trillion KRW in low-interest loans and 1.1 trillion KRW in semiconductor ecosystem funds, but most of the burden will fall on enterprises.Park Kyung-soo, Executive Vice President of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association: The semiconductor industry will fall behind in the next upturn if investment stops; even during downturns, R&D, equipment investment, and orders for materials and components must be maintained, requiring long-term policy, financial, and tax support. China is catching up with a national-level support system, and South Korea also needs a response system involving the government, political circles, financial institutions, and enterprises to act together.