Samsung Electronics has raised prices for its advanced contract chipmaking by up to 15% on new orders, as demand for AI accelerators outpaces the capacity of the world's leading-edge foundries, according to a Reuters report citing people familiar with the pricing. The increases, which took effect in July, apply mainly to Samsung's 4-nanometer (SF4) and 5-nanometer (SF5) manufacturing processes.
The size of the increase varies by customer location. U.S. and Chinese customers on the SF4 process are seeing prices rise 10% to 15%, while Taiwanese customers face a smaller 5% to 10% bump; the older 8-nanometer node is also up roughly 10%. Samsung expects advanced processes to account for more than half of its foundry revenue this year, with AI and high-performance-computing work alone climbing to more than 30% of that business, up from 15% to 20% in late 2025.
Spillover From a Squeezed TSMC
The increases mark a turnaround for a foundry division that has been a loss-maker since 2022, and they reflect a broader dynamic reshaping the contract chipmaking market this year: as TSMC's most advanced lines fill up with AI orders and its own prices rise, customers who can't get allocation are increasingly turning to Samsung and Intel instead.
As TSMC faces tight capacity and raises prices, customers are shifting to rivals such as Samsung and Intel, prompting Samsung to raise its prices as well.
Lee Min-hee, analyst, BNK Investment & Securities
Lee added that continued price increases could push Samsung's foundry business into profitability as soon as next year, earlier than previously expected by most analysts covering the division.
Chinese customers are notably among those accepting the steepest increases, a pattern that traces back to U.S. export controls on advanced chipmaking equipment. Those controls have limited what China's domestic foundries can build, pushing Chinese chip designers to rely more heavily on Samsung's overseas capacity even at a premium — mirroring the same AI-driven supply crunch pushing up prices for Nvidia's export-controlled processors this month.
The foundry increases are also unfolding alongside a separate, steeper run-up in memory prices, with Samsung's blended DRAM and NAND pricing reported to be running far above 2025 averages as AI infrastructure buildouts strain global memory supply. Together, the two trends point to a chipmaking industry where nearly every layer of the AI hardware stack — logic, memory and packaging alike — is now a seller's market.
