Samsung's struggles with HBM3E high-bandwidth memory chips are well documented. Thermal and yield issues have prevented the chips from being approved by NVIDIA for its AI accelerators. Samsung has been trying to win the approval for over a year now and despite making changes to the design, it's yet to win those orders.
SK Hynix got the jump on Samsung in the HBM segment and it has emerged as NVIDIA's leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips. So even as Samsung tries to get more orders for its HBM3E, SK Hynix is now confidently projecting that it will sell out its entire 2026 HBM production by the first half of this year.
Samsung's biggest HBM competitor is leaping ahead
SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said during the company's shareholders meeting that the HBM supply volume for 2025 has already sold out. The company will lock up orders with customers for its entire 2026 volume in the first half of this year.
The company is leading Samsung in this segment, and is already supplying fifth-generation 12-layer HBM3E chips to NVIDIA. It also showcased a sample of its 12-layer HBM4 chip at NVIDIA's GTC 2025 conference, highlighting the company's readiness for the next generation of HBM chips. SK Hynix plans to mass produce HBM4 chips in the second half of this year.
Its inability to effectively compete with SK Hynix in the HBM segment has cost Samsung a lot of money. Even as the company tries to get more HBM3E orders, it's now focusing on ensuring that it doesn't let SK Hynix run away with the HBM4 order book. Top Samsung executives assured shareholders during the recent annual meeting that there won't be a repeat of the mistakes made with HBM3E.
Hopefully that will turn out to be the case, because Samsung can ill-afford to lose billions in orders to one of its biggest rivals, while its business faces a mountain of other challenges.
