Samsung Shares Surge 6.5% After Shipping HBM4E Samples

Shares of Samsung Electronics surged as much as 6.51% after the company said it had begun shipping samples of its latest high-bandwidth memory chip to its customers globally.

The chipmaker's 12-layer HBM4E chip, which it described as an industry first, can reach speeds of up to 16 Gigabits-per-second with improved energy efficiency and thermal performance, the company said in a press release. Samsung also noted that HBM4E was faster than its previous HBM4 products.

High Bandwidth Memory chips, such as those produced by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are used in advanced artificial intelligence systems. They help processors handle large amounts of data quickly, required by AI accelerators such as Nvidia's Rubin and Google's Ironwood Tensor Processing Unit.

Samsung's 12-layer HBM4E, which stacks Dynamic Random-Access Memory vertically, has a 48-gigabyte capacity, representing more than a 30% increase compared with the previous generation, the company said. The South Korean chipmaker added that there are plans to expand the lineup to include an 8-layer 32GB and a 16-layer 64GB configuration, depending on customer requirements.

"Through our advanced manufacturing capabilities and preemptive infrastructure investments, we will continue to drive the growth of the global AI memory market," said Sang Joon Hwang, executive vice president and head of memory development at Samsung Electronics.

The news comes after Samsung began shipping HBM4 chips to customers in February, as it seeks to narrow the gap with SK Hynix and strengthen its position in the next-generation AI memory market. Samsung is pushing to gain ground in next-generation AI memory.

Shares last traded 3.67% higher at 310,500 won.