Samsung Electronics on Wednesday crossed a market capitalisation of $1 trillion (£793 billion), making the South Korean chip giant only the second firm in Asia to reach the milestone after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The stock jumped more than 15 per cent in Seoul trading, putting it on course for the biggest one-day advance in Samsung's history, according to FactSet data.CNBCnoted Samsung had first briefly touched the $1 trillion mark on 26 February before pulling back.

The milestone arrives alongside a separate development that could reshape Samsung's future revenue mix. Apple is said to be in exploratory discussions with Samsung over potentially manufacturing processors for Apple devices in the United States, according toBloomberg.

Intelhas also been named in the discussions. The talks would give Apple a secondary production option beyond longtime chip supplier TSMC.

Samsung's rally pushed the broader Kospi benchmark past the 7,000 level, a threshold it had never previously breached. SK Hynix, Samsung's fellow memory chip maker, climbed more than 10 per cent. Together, the two firms account for over 43 per cent of the index's total weighting.

First-quarter operating profit at Samsung came in at 57.2 trillion won ($39.2 billion/£31.1 billion), a more-than-eightfold rise from a year earlier. Revenue reached a record 133.9 trillion won ($91.8 billion/£72.9 billion). To put that in context, a single quarter's profit surpassed the 43.6 trillion won ($29.9 billion/£23.7 billion) Samsung earned across all of 2025.

High-bandwidth memory chips, the specialised components powering AI data centres, sit at the centre of this earnings surge. Samsung announced in February that it had started mass-producing HBM4, the newest and sixth generation of the technology. Those chips are expected to power Nvidia's forthcoming Vera Rubin AI architecture.

SK Hynix still commands an estimated 55 per cent of the HBM market to Samsung's roughly 25 per cent. Positive customer feedback on Samsung's latest HBM4 products has helped close the gap, though, and margins on standard DRAM have lately surpassed those on HBM, easing competitive pressure.

A new partnership linking Samsung Securities with Interactive Brokers has given American investors a direct route into South Korean stocks, and foreign capital is flooding in. Global investors poured a near-record 2.9 trillion won ($2 billion/£1.6 billion) into Kospi shares on Monday alone, and buying resumed on Wednesday following a public holiday.

Jupiter Asset Management's Sam Konrad said supply in the memory sector is falling short of demand. Samsung itself has signalled 2027 will bring even tighter conditions than 2026, Konrad added, which should keep NAND and DRAM prices on an upward trajectory.

Source: International Business Times UK