Samsung Forecasts Record ₩57.2 Tn Q1 2026 Profit on AI Memory Supercycle

Chip-cycle blowouts are not new: in 1984, DRAM prices tripled in nine months before collapsing in 1985, and again in 1995–96 prices spiked only to crash when capacity caught up. Samsung’s guidance echoes those episodes but on a scale multiplied by today’s AI arms race. The episode illustrates two reinforcing structural forces: (1) hyperscale demand concentrating profits in a handful of upstream suppliers, and (2) currency swings acting as covert earnings levers for export-heavy tech giants. Over a century horizon, such moments mark how general-purpose technologies—electrification in the 1920s, the internet in the 1990s, AI in the 2020s—temporarily shift economic power to the makers of key enabling components before commoditisation and policy responses redistribute value. Whether Samsung’s windfall endures will hinge on its ability to manage capacity, geopolitical supply shocks, and social backlash against widening inequality, just as U.S. radio makers discovered after their 1929 boom that technology fads can reverse overnight.