Samsung's Lee family wealth doubles to $45.5B on AI chip boom as 30,000 workers demand profit share and threaten strike

"The Lee family did not build the AI industry. But the AI industry cannot function without what Samsung builds, and for the moment, that dependency is worth $22.8 billion in new wealth for a single family in a single year."

"Samsung's financial turnaround rests on one product category: high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, the specialised DRAM chips that sit inside the GPU modules used to train and run large AI models."

"When Samsung reported first-quarter results, the semiconductor division accounted for the overwhelming majority of the profit swing, converting 57.2 trillion won in operating profit, roughly eight times what it earned in the same period last year."

The Lee family, controlling Samsung, has seen their wealth double to $45.5 billion in a year, moving from tenth to third among Asia's richest families. This increase is attributed to a 186% rise in Samsung Electronics' stock, fueled by demand for high-bandwidth memory chips essential for AI data centers. Samsung's Q1 operating profit reached 57.2 trillion won, significantly higher than the previous year. Meanwhile, 30,000 workers are demanding a 15% profit share and threatening an 18-day strike over compensation.

Read at TNW | Artificial-Intelligence