Samsung Electronics has signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadcom covering memory chips, contract manufacturing, and advanced packaging in a collaboration projected to exceed $200 billion through 2030, bolstering Samsung's foundry ambitions against TSMC.
Samsung Electronics announced Saturday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with U.S. chip designer Broadcom, outlining a collaboration envisaged to exceed $200 billion through 2030 and spanning memory chips, contract manufacturing, and advanced packaging.
The agreement marks a significant expansion of ties between the two companies, reinforcing Samsung's push to strengthen its foundry business against dominant rival TSMC by securing long-term production commitments from one of the world's leading custom AI chip designers.
"The expanded collaboration reflects Samsung's focus on supporting customers with end-to-end semiconductor technologies across an increasingly diverse range of AI and high-performance computing applications," the company said in a statement.
Under the five-year arrangement, Broadcom's expertise in designing application-specific integrated circuits — chips engineered for particular tasks rather than general-purpose workloads — will be combined with Samsung's manufacturing capabilities.
Among the deal's specific provisions, Broadcom's next-generation communications chips, built for high-speed data transfer, are slated to be produced using Samsung's sub-2-nanometre process technology. The two companies will also collaborate on next-generation high-bandwidth memory products.
The partnership arrives as global technology companies accelerate development of custom AI accelerators, moving away from sole reliance on general-purpose graphics processors. That trend has intensified demand for specialized chip design and fabrication partnerships, benefiting foundries capable of handling complex, customized production runs.
Securing Broadcom as a long-term customer could help lift utilization rates at Samsung's advanced manufacturing facilities, a metric the company has been working to improve as it competes with TSMC for the business of major AI platform builders.
Samsung has pursued several high-profile foundry relationships in recent months. Last month, co-CEO and chip division head Jun Young-hyun said he discussed next-generation foundry cooperation with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, including future HBM4E and HBM5 memory products. Earlier this year, Samsung said it expected to secure additional advanced 2-nanometre foundry orders in the near term following discussions with major technology companies.
The company also won a $16.5 billion contract last year to manufacture logic chips for electric vehicle maker Tesla, signaling growing breadth in its foundry customer base outside the traditional smartphone supply chain.
The Broadcom deal, if it reaches its projected scale, would rank among the largest semiconductor supply arrangements on record, underscoring the capital intensity now driving the AI chip supply chain and the lengths to which foundries are willing to go to lock in anchor customers ahead of what analysts expect to be a sustained wave of custom silicon investment.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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