Samsung Foundry Chief Sets 2028 for Annual Profit, Tempering Talk of a 2026 Rebound - Tech Times

Samsung Electronics' foundry chief, Han Jin-man, stated on June 12, 2026, that the company's foundry business is expected to achieve annual profitability by 2028, a timeline later than some industry e... Read original →

Samsung Foundry’s delay in achieving annual profitability until 2028 reveals structural tensions between its advanced-node ramp and customer diversification. While 2nm yields have surpassed 60%, they remain below the 70% threshold needed for cost-efficient mass production, straining EUV depreciation economics. Tesla’s AI6 contract—though securing 2027 Texas fab utilization—comes with conservative pricing that suppresses margins. U.S. CHIPS Act compliance forces costly localization of supply chains and labor, inflating operational overhead. Meanwhile, TSMC (Taiwan, China) is capitalizing on Samsung’s hesitation by locking in AI chipmakers like Groq and NVIDIA with integrated HBM4 solutions on mature nodes. Over the next 12–24 months, without a clear differentiation in AI inference silicon, Samsung risks entrenching its foundry in a high-capex, low-margin trap, potentially distorting capital allocation across its memory and logic divisions.