Latest news with #AI-supporting
Mint
07-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
Samsung Profit Halves on US Chip Curbs, AI Memory Delays
Samsung Electronics Co.'s profit fell for the first time since 2023, hurt by US curbs on China-bound AI chips and hiccups in its plans to sell cutting-edge memory to Nvidia Corp. South Korea's largest company reported preliminary operating profit of 4.6 trillion won in the June quarter, a roughly 56% drop from a year ago. Analysts on average had projected a 41% decline. Revenue stood at 74 trillion won. One-time inventory-related costs contributed to the drop, and customer evaluation and shipments of its advanced memory products are proceeding, Samsung said in a statement. Operating losses in its contract chipmaking business are expected to narrow in the second half of the year on a gradual recovery in demand, Samsung said. The company will provide a full financial statement with net income and divisional breakdowns later this month. Samsung has been struggling to regain its footing in high-bandwidth memory chips, which are critical for powering Nvidia's AI accelerators. The company has yet to secure certification from Nvidia for its most advanced product — the 12-layer HBM3E — creating an unusually long lead time for rival SK Hynix Inc. in the highly lucrative space. Meanwhile, US competitor Micron Technology Inc. has been rapidly advancing to stake its own claim. Analysts polled by Bloomberg News prior to the preliminary earnings release expected Samsung's chip division to post an operating profit of 2.7 trillion won in the second quarter, up from 1.1 trillion in the prior quarter but still significantly lower than 6.5 trillion won a year earlier. In April, Samsung signaled a better outlook, saying it shipped enhanced HBM3E samples to major customers and expected that product line to contribute to revenue in the second quarter. The company also said it plans to begin mass production of HBM4 chips in the second half of the year. Samsung is fighting to catch up to SK Hynix, which has aggressively positioned itself as Nvidia's primary HBM4 supplier. It shipped the world's first 12-layer HBM4 samples to customers ahead of schedule, followed by Micron in June, while Samsung has had to revise its 12-layer HBM3E design. Samsung secured an order from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., joining Micron as a supplier, according to a June release. But its failure to win early certification for HBM3E chips from Nvidia — the dominant maker of AI-supporting graphics processing units — is hurting its attempts to take significant market share. Bernstein analysts led by Mark Li, who had previously expected Samsung's 12-layer HBM3E would be qualified by Nvidia in the second quarter, trimmed their forecast for Samsung's HBM market share, saying they now expect certification in the third quarter. 'Samsung will gradually narrow the gap vs rivals,' they wrote in a June 23 research note. 'We forecast SK Hynix remains the leader in 2027, but with others catching up and SK Hynix's edge eroding, the shares held by suppliers will be more similarly distributed then than now.' Bernstein estimates SK Hynix holds 57% of the HBM market in 2025, followed by Samsung at 27% and Micron at 16%. At its annual shareholder meeting in March, Samsung vowed to strengthen its position in the HBM market this year, responding to concerns over its underperformance in AI. Jun Young-hyun, head of Samsung's chip business, said that Samsung's failure to secure an early lead in the HBM market contributed to it lagging behind rival SK Hynix and pledged not to repeat the mistake with HBM4. The next-generation memory is expected to be used in Nvidia's Rubin GPU architecture. 'While uncertainties remain around the time line for quality certification, we see no indication of a strategy shift and believe the company is on track for a 3Q2025 market launch,' Daishin Securities Co. analyst Ryu Hyung-keun wrote in a recent research report. With assistance from Shinhye Kang. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Musk's xAI increased Tennessee gas turbines without permits, community groups say
(Reuters) -Elon Musk's xAI has nearly doubled gas turbines at its Tennessee data center, exceeding previously known figures and surpassing the number for which the company has submitted permits, according to a letter from community groups to the county's health department. The Southern Environmental Law Center and local groups have called on the health department to cease operating all the turbines till the company complies with the critical Clean Air Act and local protections. Reuters could not independently verify the allegations, and the Environmental Protection Agency, Shelby County Health Department and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "The dozens of turbines operating outside the datacenter likely make xAI the largest industrial source of the smog-forming pollutant NOx in Memphis," Southern Environmental Law Center said in a statement. The data center's expanded turbine operations and resulting emissions require xAI to obtain a "major source permit", yet the company operates the equipment without any regulatory authorization, the group added. The massive surge in power consumption of AI-supporting data centers in the United States is driving an increase in the usage of fossil fuels as clean-energy deployments struggle to keep up. Billionaire Musk had dubbed the Tennessee data center, which powers the firm's Grok chatbot, as "the most powerful AI training cluster in the world" last year. The environmental law group said xAI's 35 gas turbines have a capacity of 422 MW, comparable to the Tennessee Valley Authority's Brownsville gas power plant, which has a capacity of 425 MW. It had said in August that xAI's Memphis data center had installed nearly 20 gas turbines with a combined capacity of about 100 MW. The Greater Memphis Chamber said in December that xAI planned to expand its Memphis supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units. In late March, the AI firm acquired Musk-owned X in a deal that values the social media platform at $33 billion.
Reuters
09-04-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Musk's xAI increased Tennessee gas turbines without permits, community groups say
April 9 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's xAI has nearly doubled gas turbines at its Tennessee data center, exceeding previously known figures and surpassing the number for which the company has submitted permits, according to a letter from community groups to the county's health department. The Southern Environmental Law Center and local groups have called on the health department to cease operating all the turbines till the company complies with the critical Clean Air Act and local protections. Reuters could not independently verify the allegations, and the Environmental Protection Agency, Shelby County Health Department and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "The dozens of turbines operating outside the datacenter likely make xAI the largest industrial source of the smog-forming pollutant NOx in Memphis," Southern Environmental Law Center said in a statement. The data center's expanded turbine operations and resulting emissions require xAI to obtain a "major source permit", yet the company operates the equipment without any regulatory authorization, the group added. The massive surge in power consumption of AI-supporting data centers in the United States is driving an increase in the usage of fossil fuels as clean-energy deployments struggle to keep up. Billionaire Musk had dubbed the Tennessee data center, which powers the firm's Grok chatbot, as "the most powerful AI training cluster in the world" last year. The environmental law group said xAI's 35 gas turbines have a capacity of 422 MW, comparable to the Tennessee Valley Authority's Brownsville gas power plant, which has a capacity of 425 MW. It had said in August that xAI's Memphis data center had installed nearly 20 gas turbines with a combined capacity of about 100 MW. The Greater Memphis Chamber said in December that xAI planned to expand its Memphis supercomputer to house at least one million graphics processing units. In late March, the AI firm acquired Musk-owned X in a deal that values the social media platform at $33 billion.
