Samsung Agrees to Chip Deal With Broadcom

Yuichiro Chino via Getty ImagesSouth Korea’s Samsung Electronics has entered into a deal with U.S.-based chipmaker and designer Broadcom to widen their collaboration on AI chips.Confirmation of the partnership was timed to coincide with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's visit to Silicon Valley on July 24-25 to bolster trade ties between his country and U.S. tech giants.In a statement, the companies said they had signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on memory and foundry technologies to support the next generation of AI infrastructure.The alliance, which will see Samsung make chips for Broadcom, is expected to be worth more than $200 billion through 2030, and according to the Seoul-based electronics giant, reflects its “continued focus on supporting customers with end-to-end semiconductor technologies across an increasingly diverse range of AI and high-performance computing applications”.Specifically, Samsung and Broadcom say they will supply industry-leading memory systems, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), to support the U.S. company’s next-generation AI accelerators.Related:AI Arrives in the Private Markets BusinessThe deal also covers Broadcom’s high-speed communications chips to be made with Samsung’s sub-2-nanometer process technologies, bringing advances in packaging and efficiency, according to the companies.“AI is driving unprecedented demand for tightly integrated semiconductor technologies spanning memory, logic and advanced packaging,” Young Hyun Jun, head of Samsung’s electronics device solutions division and memory business, said in a statement. “By expanding our collaboration with Broadcom across these critical technologies, we look forward to delivering greater value to customers while advancing the AI infrastructure of the future.”The expanded collaboration came a few days after another win for a South Korean company, also timed to coincide with the presidential visit, when SK Group had agreed to a deal worth more than $500 billion with Nvidia that is also intended to boost AI infrastructure.Among the highlights of that deal was confirmation that SK Group’s forthcoming 2GW cloud in South Korea will use Nvidia’s DSX platform and deploy the company’s Vera Rubin chips.In addition, the companies said the partnership would cover the co-development of next-generation AI memory systems, including HBM, to address a range of continually evolving infrastructure demands, from large language model training to agentic AI and physical AI.About the AuthorContributing WriterGraham Hope has worked in automotive journalism in the U.K. for 26 years, including spells as editor of leading consumer news website and weekly Auto Express and respected buying guide CarBuyer.