Samsung may stop making Exynos chips for cars

Although Samsung's semiconductor chip business has skyrocketed this year, its non-memory chip businesses are still struggling. To make its foundry and logic chip design divisions profitable, the company seems to have decided to stop making Exynos chips for cars.

A rumor surfaced last year claiming that Samsung was thinking about exiting the automotive processor segment. Now, a report from Munhwa claims that the South Korean chip giant has officially decided to halt the development of future Exynos Auto series chips for vehicles, even though the company had invested heavily in the project since 2018.

Samsung secured high-profile deals for Exynos Auto chips from Hyundai in 2023 and BMW in 2025, and it will honor its production commitments to those carmakers. However, it will stop developing any new automotive processors in the future.

Apparently, the development of each Exynos Auto chip costs over KRW 100 billion (~$75 million), but supply prices are just $20 to $40 per chip. Furthermore, the automotive chip market is currently dominated by Qualcomm, making it difficult for Samsung to sustain profits.

Instead, the company seems to be focusing on high-profit segments like mobile systems-on-chip (SoCs) and camera sensors. Samsung is reportedly trying to expand the use of Exynos chips in its phones, starting with the Exynos 2700 in the Galaxy S27 Ultra in Europe and Korea.

The company also secured a camera sensor supply order from Apple for next-generation iPhones. It started the mass production of those camera sensors earlier this year at its foundry in Austin, Texas.

Samsung is also reportedly diversifying by expanding into AI data center chips, display driver integrated circuits (DDI), and power management integrated circuits (PMIC).