Samsung HBM4 surpasses $1B in sales within 4 months; projects $10B full-year run rate
Samsung Electronics has reached a $1 billion cumulative sales milestone for its HBM4 memory chips just 130 days after becoming the first company globally to mass-produce the sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory in February 2026. Industry sources expect cumulative HBM4 revenue to exceed $1.2 billion by the end of June, with analysts projecting full-year 2026 revenue could surpass $10 billion, an unusual achievement for any new memory product in its debut production year.
HBM4 is engineered for next-generation AI accelerators, particularly NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform and custom ASIC deployments from hyperscalers including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Broadcom. Samsung's rapid ramp reflects how constrained HBM supply remains despite aggressive production expansion. The company is ramping capacity toward 250,000 wafers per month by year-end—a ~47% increase from current 170,000—leveraging both conversion of existing lines and expansion of its Pyeongtaek P5 fabrication facility.
Competitive dynamics are tightening: SK Hynix, which had dominated the HBM market, is strategically slowing some HBM4 conversion lines to capture elevated DDR5 margins (approaching 90%) rather than full HBM buildout. The HBM market itself is expected to reach $54.6 billion in 2026, up 58% year-over-year, driven by ASIC and GPU demand for inference-heavy AI workloads. Samsung's 4-nanometer process technology in the HBM4 base die gives it both performance and yield advantages.
For practitioners and chip buyers, this signals acute HBM shortage will persist through 2027. The rapid revenue scale-up demonstrates that supply, not demand, is the constraint: $10B run rate on a new product is unheard of because this is the AI moment. Teams planning 2027 and 2028 inference infrastructure buildouts should expect continued HBM allocation pressure and negotiate long-term agreements (LTAs) now. Samsung is also shipping HBM4E (seventh-gen) samples, signaling the next ramp is already in motion.
Sources
- Primary source
- en.sedaily.com
“Samsung Electronics' HBM4 surpassed $1 billion in sales just 130 days after the world's first mass production in February”
- koreaherald.com
“Industry sources expect Samsung's HBM4 revenue to exceed $1.2 billion by the end of June”
- finance.biggo.com
“Annual revenue is projected to reach $10 billion by year-end, an exceptional figure for a new memory product in its first year of mass production”
- techtimes.com
“SK Hynix is delaying the conversion of some HBM3E production lines to HBM4, instead retooling capacity for DDR5 DRAM production”