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Samsung, it seems, deserves a little more respect. The electronics conglomerate may be best known in the U.S. for its TV sets and smartphones, which jostle with the iPhone for attention, but it’s also one of the three biggest makers of memory chips globally (along with Micron Technology and SK Hynix). The explosion of that business, thanks to demand from AI data centers, has turbocharged profits at all three companies—with Samsung providing fresh evidence of that on Tuesday.
Samsung issued a “pre-earnings guidance” notification—which we usually see from companies about to drop bad news they think investors need to hear as soon as possible—that its second-quarter operating profit would be about 89.4 trillion Korean won, or $59 billion. That would be up 1,800% on the year-earlier operating profit of just $3.1 billion. That’s even better than the 1,435% growth Micron reported in its operating profit a couple of weeks ago for the May quarter. Hynix, which is planning to list on the Nasdaq later this week, hasn’t yet reported for the second quarter. (Ironically, investors sold Samsung stock 7% down on Tuesday, apparently expecting even better growth—some people are never satisfied.)
You can guess that Samsung’s mushrooming profit isn’t impressing one company—Apple, which usually has reason to feel superior to Samsung. While the two companies have a roughly equal share of the global smartphone market—Samsung had 21.2% to Apple’s 21% in the first quarter, according to IDC estimates—Apple makes a lot more money. It generated $133 billion in operating profit in its fiscal 2025 year, while Samsung earned $28.8 billion from all its businesses.
Now rising memory and storage costs have forced Apple to raise prices on many of its products, it said a couple of weeks ago. CEO Tim Cook complained to The Wall Street Journal last month that “the memory guys are passing along huge price increases.” Higher prices are likely to dampen consumer demand, so Apple’s bottom line is likely to suffer—even as Samsung is awash in money.
Amazon’s Debt
Amazon is shoring up its cash reserves—again. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the commerce and cloud giant was raising another $25 billion in bonds. That’s on top of roughly $70 billion of long term bonds it has sold in the past nine months or so.
Does Amazon need the extra money? It had $143 billion in cash and securities on its balance sheet as of March 31, offset by $119 billion of debt. The cash generated by its operations will fund most of its $200 billion in projected capital expenditures this year, although it will likely have a shortfall of about $11 billion according to analyst estimates, S&P data show.
In addition to covering that shortfall, Amazon has agreed to invest an additional $35 billion in OpenAI at some point and to spend $10.9 billion buying Globalstar. In April, it invested $5 billion in Anthropic, and it has committed to make another $20 billion available. Amazon has plenty of money to meet these commitments whenever they come due. But raising money now while it’s available is not a bad strategy.
In Other News
• SpaceX’s AI unit and Cursor plan to launch their first jointly developed AI model as soon as Wednesday, according to a memo sent to staff.
• SpaceX shares fell 6.8% to just below $150 a share on Tuesday as the company joined the Nasdaq 100 index. The decline suggests that buying demand from index-tracking funds might have tapered off as the date for SpaceX’s addition to the index got closer.
• Chinese officials have held meetings to discuss the idea of restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the discussions.
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