According to Reuters, the demand for AI chips continues to squeeze advanced process production capacity, and Samsung Electronics has raised the prices of some new orders for advanced process wafer foundry, with the highest increase reaching 15%!

Among them, the demand from Chinese customers is particularly strong. According to reports, Samsung is currently unable to fulfill all orders as the company needs to reserve production capacity for both American customers and a portion of its own chip production capacity.

According to industry estimates, the price increase also means that Samsung's wafer foundry business, which has been losing money since 2022, is starting to see a turnaround. The sharp rise in the price of storage chips used in AI systems has helped Samsung set a profit record, but the wafer foundry business has not been able to significantly narrow the gap with TSMC.

Insiders revealed that Samsung raised the OEM price for 4nm SF4 process chips in July. The price of SF4 has increased by 5% -10% or 10% -15% depending on different regions compared to the previous month.

In addition, the price of 5nm SF5 process wafers has increased by 10% -15%, and the price of more mature 8nm processes has also increased by nearly 10%.

TSMC's tight production capacity has also given Samsung greater room to raise prices. A person familiar with Samsung's operations revealed that the SF4 production line at the Pyeongtaek factory in South Korea has been operating at full capacity since the end of last year.

It is understood that this production line not only produces logic chips for customers such as Qualcomm, but also manufactures the basic bare chips required for Samsung's own multi-layer high bandwidth memory.

Samsung Electronics had expected in July that its wafer foundry business would soon return to profitability as factory utilization rates increased, yield improved, and prices strengthened. The sales growth of major customers in the United States and China, coupled with the demand for HBM basic wafers, will drive wafer foundry revenue to achieve over double-digit year-on-year growth in the second half of this year. Meanwhile, the improvement in yield has also helped Samsung acquire more customers.

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