SEOUL/TOKYO — The world's five largest memory chipmakers posted a combined $94 billion in free cash flow last quarter, a 92-fold jump from a year earlier, as soaring artificial-intelligence hardware demand pushed DRAM and NAND prices up by as much as 60%. Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Micron Technology, Kioxia and SanDisk together generated 14.8 trillion yen in free cash flow for the quarter, according to Nikkei Asia, while their combined net profit rose 16-fold year-on-year to roughly $157 billion.
The windfall reflects a direct transfer of capital from the world's largest technology companies into the memory sector, as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta pour money into AI data centers that depend on high-bandwidth memory chips. Those buyers are increasingly locking in multi-year supply agreements, giving memory makers a degree of revenue visibility the industry has rarely had.
Samsung Sees Shortage Stretching to 2028
Samsung Electronics told analysts on its latest earnings call that global technology customers continue to request long-term supply commitments even as prices climb. The company forecasts that the memory shortage will intensify further in 2027 and persist through 2028, according to comments relayed by Nikkei Asia and BigGo Finance.
That outlook marks a sharp reversal from the downturn memory makers faced as recently as 2023 and 2024, when oversupply had pushed DRAM and NAND prices to multi-year lows. Prices for both memory types have since risen by 50% to 60% year-on-year, among the sharpest swings the industry has recorded in more than a decade.
SK Hynix and Kioxia Add Capacity to Chase HBM Demand
SK Hynix, which held roughly 61% of the global high-bandwidth memory (HBM) market in 2025 against Micron's 21% and Samsung's 17%, said it plans to double its wafer capacity over the next five years. HBM has become the bottleneck component in AI accelerators, and only three companies worldwide currently manufacture it at scale.
Kioxia, the Japanese NAND flash maker that has trailed its two Korean rivals, forecasts a 31-fold profit surge and plans to invest roughly 1.4 trillion yen — about $9 billion — by fiscal 2028 to expand production and upgrade its technology. The Tokyo-based company is racing to close a gap that widened during the last memory downturn.
Profitability Test for the AI Cycle
The scale of the profit swing has drawn comparisons to prior technology cycles. Kim Yang-paeng, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade, said the results counter comparisons to the dot-com bubble because profitability is materializing alongside the capital spending rather than lagging years behind it, as cited by BigGo Finance.
Separately, Micron and SanDisk — both based in the United States — also posted sharply higher profits in the same quarter, underscoring that the price gains span the industry rather than concentrating at a single supplier. Memory chip output for 2026 is already largely allocated under existing contracts, leaving buyers with little room to negotiate on price before new capacity comes online in 2027 and 2028.