Samsung Posts Record Profit and Loses Value, Testing the AI Chip Boom

Samsung Electronics said it expects operating profit for the latest quarter to rise roughly nineteenfold from a year earlier, its third consecutive record quarter, according to Euronews. Even so, investors cut the company's value by more than 100 billion dollars (about 87.5 billion euros), the same outlet reported, as doubts grew over how long the boom in memory chips used for artificial intelligence can last.

The market reaction spread beyond Seoul. The Israeli financial daily Globes reported that South Korean shares fell after Samsung's preliminary figures and that United States stock futures fell with them, while Tel Aviv's benchmark TA-35 index lost about 1.2 percent and the dollar rose above 3 shekels.

The gap between the sharply higher profit and the falling share price is the central point. Memory makers have committed enormous capital to expand output for AI data centers, and the selloff suggests investors are pricing the risk that this spending has exceeded durable demand. When profit rises sharply and valuations still fall, the market is judging the cycle, not the quarter.