Samsung's shares surge as much as 6% company ships next-generation AI memory chip samples

Shares of Samsung Electronics surged as much as 6.51% after the company said it had begun shipping samples of its latest high-bandwidth memory chip to its customers globally.

Samsung's 12-layer HBM4E chip, which it described as an industry first, can reach speeds of up to 16 Gigabits-per-second "with improved energy efficiency and thermal performance," the company said in a press release.

High Bandwidth Memory chips, such as those produced by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are used in advanced artificial intelligence systems. They help processors handle large amounts of data quickly, required by AI accelerators such as Nvidia's Rubin graphics processing units and Google's Ironwood Tensor Processing Unit.

Samsung's 12-layer HBM4E, which stacks Dynamic Random-Access Memory vertically, has a 48-gigabyte capacity, representing more than a 30% increase compared with the previous generation, the company said.

The South Korean chipmaker added that there are plans to expand the lineup to include an 8-layer 32GB and a 16-layer 64GB configuration, depending on customer requirements.

"Through our advanced manufacturing capabilities and preemptive infrastructure investments, we will continue to drive the growth of the global AI memory market," said Sang Joon Hwang, executive vice president and head of memory development at Samsung Electronics.

The news comes after Samsung began shipping HBM4 chips to customers in February, as it seeks to narrow the gap with SK Hynix and strengthen its position in the next-generation AI memory market.

Shares last traded 3.67% higher at 310,500 won.