Samsung expects a record operating profit of 107.4 trillion won — about $80 billion — for the third quarter, up 782 percent from last year. Here is what is driving it.

The answer is memory chips. A severe shortage of DRAM and high-bandwidth memory has sent prices soaring as AI data centres buy everything they can.

Margins on DRAM are reportedly above 80 percent. Analysts expect the shortage to last until 2028, which means the boom has room to run.

This is Samsung’s fourth straight record quarter. Yet its mobile division actually lost money in Q2 — the company is cutting phone production by 30 percent because it cannot afford the chips.

TSMC’s revenue jumped 50 percent on the same trend. Memory chips have become the new oil: whoever controls supply controls the AI economy.

The boom has a dark side for consumers. Memory shortages are pushing up prices of phones, laptops and servers — costs that eventually reach buyers.

Governments are now treating chips as strategic assets. The US, EU, Japan and India are all subsidizing domestic chip plants to reduce dependence on a few suppliers.