BigAI Emergence, Samsung Earnings & Tesla deal, Nvidia $5 Trillion soon, Microsoft $4 Trillion

The AI hype continues and sends semiconductor giants into "build mode".

Samsung under the microscope.

After, or rightfully still in the middle of a Summer hiatus this will be a condensed “catch up” post for what we may have missed in the Semiconductor news cycle of the past few weeks. Note that we’ll return to our usual cadence by the end of August, when most of your are back at your work desks. 🌴🥥🌺

BigAI is Emerging

• Anthropic expects ARR of $9 Billion by the end of 2025, while OpenAI claims it’s reached $12 Billion in annual recurring revenue in August, 2025.

• BigAI refers to a new group of companies outside of BigTech and that BigTech have invested in including Microsoft, Amazon and Google into the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic. This group is likely to soon include xAI, Meta Superintelligence Lab and Thinking Machines Lab soon (“Thinky”).

• Nvidia is also part of BigAI and is likely to hit a market cap of $5 Trillion this year.

Samsung Earnings - Is Samsung the next Intel? 🇰🇷

• For the quarter that ended on June 30, Samsung reported consolidated revenue of 74.6 trillion won ($57.4 billion), up 1% year-over-year but down 6% from the previous quarter.

• Samsung Electronics suffered a sharp earnings shock in the April to June period, with operating profit plunging 55.23 percent year-on-year to 4.68 trillion won ($3.37 billion) due to a slump in the semiconductor business.

• Net profit shrank 48% to 5.12 trillion won, falling short of analysts’ expectation of 6.39 trillion won.

• By sector, the semiconductor business tumbled 94% on year to 400 billion won in operating profit. Revenue slipped 2.3 percent to 27.9 trillion won.

• Samsung is also paying close attention to the outcome of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s ongoing review of semiconductor tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. The results are expected to be released in mid-August. Read more.

Samsung Reportedly Investing Billions To Build Advanced Packaging Facility in U.S. After Securing Major Tesla Deal

• Three days ago, Tesla signed $16.5B deal with Samsung to make AI chips.

• In December, the Biden administration announced $4.75bn in funding for Samsung’s semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Texas under the Chips Act.

• Samsung is reportedly ready to increase its investments into the US following a major Tesla deal, and it will include setting up an advanced packaging facility in the region. Read the details.

🌍 Semiconductor Bits & Bites 📱

A Note: As I’m located in Taiwan and many of my favorite analysts are here as well, the semiconductor news is of course biased to the Taiwan, South Korea and Japan region, while I do try to cover American news here as much as I can too: