MANY MINDEDSamsung will feed Broadcom's AI accelerators with memory to 2030
Samsung Electronics and Broadcom announced on July 25 that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to work together across memory and foundry, an arrangement they value at more than $200 billion over five years and describe as extending through 2030. The memory side covers supply of high-bandwidth memory and other memory products for Broadcom's AI accelerators. The foundry side puts Broadcom products, including wireless broadband parts, on Samsung's two-nanometer and below processes, and may extend to Samsung's advanced packaging.
Memory is the underrated constraint. An accelerator's throughput is limited as much by how fast it can be fed as by how fast it computes, and high-bandwidth memory is the scarce, expensive component in that path. A multi-year committed arrangement between the company designing the accelerators and the company making the memory is the kind of thing that converts spot scarcity into planned capacity — the mechanism that eventually moves the price of compute down instead of up.
It also sets a second serious pairing against TSMC in advanced logic. Broadcom has been assembling these: a multiyear $30 billion agreement with Apple earlier in July, and an April deal with Meta for a two-nanometer AI accelerator running through 2029. Broadcom reported record revenue of $22.2 billion in its second quarter; Samsung reported record first-quarter revenue and operating profit led by memory.
The caveat is the instrument. A memorandum of understanding is an intent to collaborate, not a purchase order, and the $200 billion figure is the companies' own framing of a five-year envelope. Watch for the volumes that follow it.
Source: Manufacturing Dive