Samsung Electronics announced Saturday that it has reached an agreement with U.S. chip designer Broadcom to expand their working relationship across memory chips, contract manufacturing, and advanced packaging — a partnership expected to surpass $200 billion in value through 2030.
Securing long-term production commitments from Broadcom, one of the world’s top custom AI chip designers, could significantly increase activity at Samsung’s advanced manufacturing plants and help the company gain ground in the highly competitive AI chip supply market.
In a statement, Samsung described the expanded arrangement as reflecting “Samsung’s focus on supporting customers with end-to-end semiconductor technologies across an increasingly diverse range of AI and high-performance computing applications.”
The agreement arrives at a time when major technology companies are moving away from relying solely on general-purpose graphics processors, instead building their own custom AI accelerators. That shift is fueling demand for specialized chip design and manufacturing arrangements.
The memorandum of understanding between the two companies highlights Samsung’s push to strengthen its standing in AI semiconductors by deepening its long-term relationship with Broadcom as demand for custom AI processors continues to grow.
Over the next five years, the collaboration will combine Broadcom’s expertise in designing application-specific integrated circuits — chips built for particular tasks — with Samsung’s manufacturing capabilities.
Under the terms of the deal, Broadcom’s next-generation communications chips, which are designed for high-speed data transfer, will be produced using Samsung’s sub-2-nanometre process technology. The two companies will also work together on next-generation high-bandwidth memory products.
The partnership may help Samsung’s contract chip-making business close the gap with industry leader TSMC by attracting major technology clients. Last month, Samsung’s co-CEO and chip division head Jun Young-hyun said he met with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang to discuss next-generation foundry cooperation, including future HBM4E and HBM5 memory products.
Samsung has said it expects to land additional advanced 2-nanometre foundry orders in the near future following talks with major tech companies. Last year, the company secured a $16.5 billion contract to manufacture logic chips for electric vehicle maker Tesla.
