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Samsung Logs Best-ever Profit on AI Chip Demand

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits on Thursday, riding strong market demand for its artificial intelligence chips. Jung Yeon-je / AFP/File
South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits on Thursday, riding strong market demand for its artificial intelligence chips. Jung Yeon-je / AFP/File
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Samsung Logs Best-ever Profit on AI Chip Demand

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits on Thursday, riding strong market demand for its artificial intelligence chips. Jung Yeon-je / AFP/File
South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits on Thursday, riding strong market demand for its artificial intelligence chips. Jung Yeon-je / AFP/File

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly profits Thursday, riding massive market demand for the memory chips that power artificial intelligence.

A global frenzy to build AI data centers and develop the fast-evolving technology has sent orders for advanced high bandwidth memory microchips soaring.

That is also pushing up prices for less flashy chips used in consumer electronics -- threatening higher prices for phones, laptops and other devices worldwide.

In the quarter to December 2025, Samsung said it saw "its highest-ever quarterly consolidated revenue at KRW 93.8 trillion (US$65.5 billion)", a quarter-on-quarter increase of nine percent.

"Operating profit was also an all-time high, at KRW 20.1 trillion," the company said.

The dazzling earnings came a day after a key competitor, South Korean chip giant SK hynix, said operating profit had doubled last year to a record high, also buoyed by the AI boom.

The South Korean government has pledged to become one of the top three AI powers, behind the United States and China, with Samsung and SK hynix among the leading producers of high-performance memory.

Samsung said Thursday it expects "AI and server demand to continue increasing, leading to more opportunities for structural growth".

Annual revenue stood at 333.6 trillion won, while operating profit came in at 43.6 trillion won. Sales for the division that oversees its semiconductor business rose 33 percent quarter-on-quarter.

The company pointed to a $33.2 billion investment in chip production facilities -- pledging to continue spending in "transitioning to advanced manufacturing processes and upgrading existing production lines to meet rising demand".

- 'Clearly back' -

Major electronics manufacturers and industry analysts have warned that chipmakers focusing on AI sales will cause higher retail prices for consumer products across the board.

This week US chip firm Micron said it was building a $24 billion plant in Singapore in response to AI-driven demand that has caused a global shortage of memory components.

SK hynix announced Wednesday that its operating profit had doubled last year to a record 47.2 trillion won.

The company's shares have surged some 220 percent over the past six months, while Samsung Electronics has risen about 130 percent, part of a huge global tech rally fueled by optimism over AI.

Both companies are on the cusp of producing next-generation high-bandwidth "HBM4" chips for AI data centers, with Samsung reportedly due to start making them in February.

American chip giant Nvidia -- now the world's most valuable company -- is expected to be one of Samsung's customers for HBM4 chips.

But Nvidia has reportedly allocated around 70 percent of its HBM4 demand to SK hynix for 2026, up from the market's previous estimate of 50 percent.

"Samsung is clearly back and we are expecting them to show a significant turnaround with HBM4 for Nvidia's new products -- helping them move past last year's quality issues," Hwang Min-seong, research director at market analysis firm Counterpoint, told AFP.

But SK still "maintains a market lead in both quality and supply" of a number of key components, including Dynamic Random Access Memory chips used in AI servers, he said.

SK also this week said it will set up an "AI solutions firm" in the United States, committing $10 billion and weighing investments in US companies.

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Technology

Altman Unveils ‘Always-On’ AI Agent After OpenAI Shelves Another Model Over Security Concerns

An OpenAI display welcomes attendees as they arrive for an OpenAI developers conference at Fort Mason on September 29, 2026, in San Francisco, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
An OpenAI display welcomes attendees as they arrive for an OpenAI developers conference at Fort Mason on September 29, 2026, in San Francisco, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Altman Unveils ‘Always-On’ AI Agent After OpenAI Shelves Another Model Over Security Concerns

An OpenAI display welcomes attendees as they arrive for an OpenAI developers conference at Fort Mason on September 29, 2026, in San Francisco, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
An OpenAI display welcomes attendees as they arrive for an OpenAI developers conference at Fort Mason on September 29, 2026, in San Francisco, California. (Getty Images/AFP)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman introduced a “remarkably capable, always-on” artificial intelligence agent at an appearance Tuesday, a day after the company halted the rollout of a more advanced model over security concerns.

At the company’s annual developer conference, Altman made a slew of product announcements and updates, including OpenAI's new agents, called Dots. The agents, designed to complete ongoing tasks proactively on behalf of users, are a competitor of Meta's personal agent Muse, which exploded in popularity after Meta's own conference last week.

Dot agents will be “like an AI helper that always has your back, inspired by the cool versions of what we all watched in movies growing up," Altman said.

On Monday, OpenAI said it was holding off on releasing the other model because of concerns raised by its researchers. That followed broader calls within the industry to decelerate the pace of the technology’s advance to let safety measures catch up.

Altman avoided making references to security concerns around the shelved model during his keynote address, but said during a question-and-answer session that the company was investing more in safety, security and monitoring of AI agents.

The AI boom should be considered more like a period of renaissance than an industrial revolution, he said.

“The best version of AI is not about making people cogs in a giant machine, ever whirring faster and faster. There are some parts of life that we cannot and should not automate,” Altman said. “AI should be about giving people more power over their own lives, more tools to create, learn, discover, expand knowledge.”

The company also announced the release of GPT-6.1 Sol, an upgraded version of its model GPT-6 Sol, and a premium speed tier called “Ultrafast," among other launches and updates.

OpenAI's announcements came as Altman's industry peers were meeting with President Donald Trump Tuesday. While many in Silicon Valley have called for the government to help establish guardrails for the technology, Trump has pushed back against the idea of greater government oversight of AI.

While Altman didn't attend, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman was at the White House, along with Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Several other industry leaders joined them, along with senior administration officials and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Technology

OpenAI Cancels Release of Newest Model Due to Safety Concerns

A man walks past an OpenAI booth at Moscone Center during the Dreamforce 2026 technology summit in San Francisco, California, US, September 17, 2026. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
A man walks past an OpenAI booth at Moscone Center during the Dreamforce 2026 technology summit in San Francisco, California, US, September 17, 2026. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
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OpenAI Cancels Release of Newest Model Due to Safety Concerns

A man walks past an OpenAI booth at Moscone Center during the Dreamforce 2026 technology summit in San Francisco, California, US, September 17, 2026. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
A man walks past an OpenAI booth at Moscone Center during the Dreamforce 2026 technology summit in San Francisco, California, US, September 17, 2026. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

OpenAI will not release its newest artificial intelligence model, known as Astra 6.1, after internal testing by the ChatGPT-maker revealed it did not meet safety standards, the company confirmed Monday.

The news comes one day before the AI giant hosts an annual developer conference known as OpenAI DevDay in San Francisco, where the company is expected to make several announcements -- though it is unclear if a new version of Astra will be among them.

Astra 6.1 was an improvement over previous models in some aspects, but "it didn't quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it's done," Saachi Jain, OpenAI's head of safety systems, said in a statement, according to AFP.

"We want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that's in the company, or when we ship it to users. But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment," Jain continued.

Concerns about AI safety have escalated in recent months after models developed by OpenAI and rival lab Anthropic were involved in security incidents during testing.

Agents built with OpenAI's models have inappropriately accessed websites maintained by US federal agencies, an Australian government health statistics portal and Hugging Face, a repository of AI models.

OpenAI apologized Monday for not properly responding to the Australia incident, which involved its AI models accessing government websites without authorization.

"We are sorry and working to do better in the future," OpenAI said in a blog post, adding that the company would explain "what we know, what we have changed, and what we will do to rebuild trust with the Australian people."

"Our aim was to give affected agencies a detailed account once our investigation was complete," the ChatGPT-maker said. "However, we should have shared preliminary findings sooner and kept Australian agencies updated as more facts emerged."

OpenAI, Anthropic and other major AI developers have promised to prioritize making models that have safety guardrails to mitigate risks and that are also aligned with human values.

American chip making giant Nvidia announced on Monday that it created a system designed to stop autonomous AI programs from straying beyond what they were instructed to do.

"I believe it's an engineering problem...and we all need to hope that's an engineering problem," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told broadcaster CNBC on Monday.

"If it's not an engineering problem, it's not solvable," he added.

The AI Security Institute (AISI), an initiative under the UK government, published a study on Monday showing that GPT-6 Astra went off the rails more often during testing than its predecessors, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.5.

In simulations, GPT-6 spontaneously carried out cyberattacks at rates significantly higher than those observed for the other two interfaces.

Technology

Pope Says Concerns About AI ‘Should Be Taken Seriously’

Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)
Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)
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Pope Says Concerns About AI ‘Should Be Taken Seriously’

Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)
Pope Leo gives a press conference with accredited journalists on the return flight from France, September 28, 2026. (Reuters)

Pope Leo XIV on Monday warned concerns about artificial intelligence "should be taken seriously" but added he was not in "panic mode".

"If someone were to ask me, am I in panic mode? No, I'm not. I sleep at night," he told reporters at a press conference on the plane returning from his visit to France, referring to concerns about AI.

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics was returning to the Vatican after a four-day trip where he has been greeted by crowds.

The visit comes seven months before French voters choose a successor to President Emmanuel Macron, with the Eurosceptic, anti-immigration far-right seeking power.

During his visit, the US pontiff repeatedly warned about the need to safeguard humanity against AI.

"If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment," he said.

The debate over the risks of the technology has intensified in recent months, fueled by several incidents and apocalyptic warnings from industry professionals.

On the plane on Monday, the pope said the warnings were not "fake news, as some have said, to try and cause whether financial or some other kind of benefit".

"This is a problem that I think we need to sit down and talk about," he said, adding: "To simply say 'Oh, it's not going to happen' and close our eyes to it, I think is probably not the most responsible way to go about that".

The Vatican has in recent months stepped up its rhetoric and initiatives in support of international AI governance, particularly in the fields of nuclear technology, culture and artistic creation.