Samsung raises advanced foundry prices by up to 15% as AI demand fills its 4nm lines, report claims — Chinese customers accepting the largest hikes
Samsung raised prices on new orders across its 4nm, 5nm, and 8nm foundry processes in July, with increases reaching 15% for customers in China and the U.S., Reuters has reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Chinese chip designers, cut off from advanced chipmaking tools by U.S. export controls, are accepting the largest hikes, and Samsung's 4nm line at Pyeongtaek has reportedly been running at full capacity since late last year. The increases come not too long after Samsung cut its 2nm wafer price to $20,000 in a reported attempt to undercut TSMC by roughly a third.
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Customers in China and the U.S. saw quotes for the 4nm SF4 process climb 10% to 15% from June, while customers in Taiwan saw smaller increases of 5% to 10%, one source said. Wafers on the 5nm SF5 process rose 10% to 15%, and the 8nm node went up by close to 10%. Samsung declined to comment on the report.
Chinese orders now exceed what Samsung can take on because U.S. customers get served first and a slice of capacity stays reserved for Samsung's own silicon. This captive demand situation isn't new, with the Financial Times reporting last year that Samsung's chip exports to China grew 54% between 2023 and 2024, including a deal that supplied Baidu's Kunlun with more than three years' worth of logic dies for AI accelerators.
The Pyeongtaek SF4 line builds logic chips for Qualcomm alongside the base dies underneath Samsung's own HBM stacks, meaning external foundry customers compete for wafer starts with Samsung's memory division, the business that drove its record profits.
Counterpoint put Samsung at 7% of global foundry revenue in Q1 2026 against more than 70% for TSMC, but that gap is doing Samsung a favor on pricing: TSMC's leading-edge capacity is booked out by AI orders, and the market leader notified customers of 5% to 10% increases across all sub-5nm nodes starting in January, with some services reportedly rising around 25% in 2027. Samsung is raising prices beneath that umbrella and still landing below where TSMC's quotes are headed.
Samsung's foundry division has been loss-making since 2022, and Lee Min-hee, an analyst at BNK Investment & Securities, told the wire service that if Samsung keeps raising prices, "its foundry business could potentially become profitable as early as next year." The customer list backing that forecast has grown over the past year, spanning Tesla's $16.5 billion AI chip contract, an Apple manufacturing deal, a Broadcom AI chip agreement, and Nvidia's inference processor.