Samsung reports record profit as South Korean chip giants benefit from global AI boom

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a record operating profit of 89.5 trillion won ($62 billion) for the April-June period, a day after crosstown rival SK Hynix also reported record earnings, as the world’s two largest memory chipmakers continue to ride the global artificial intelligence boom.

Despite their soaring profits, the companies’ shares have fallen sharply this week in South Korea’s volatile stock market, where retail investors often drive sharp swings in share prices, as concerns grow over their plans to spend massively on increasing manufacturing capacity and the prospects of intensifying competition from China.

Samsung’s second-quarter operating profit was a more than 19-fold increase from a year earlier, and nearly all of it came from its semiconductor business, which benefited from rising chip prices driven by demand for AI servers and increased shipments of advanced high-bandwidth memory chips used to power AI applications. That outweighed an operating loss in its mobile, TV and home appliances division, partly due to higher component costs.

Samsung’s quarterly revenue of 171.5 trillion won ($119 billion) was also an all-time high. The company said it expects demand for its memory products to remain strong in the second half of the year, driven by continued expansion of AI infrastructure and broader adoption of agentic AI. Demand for server chips is expected to accelerate further, keeping the market undersupplied, it said in a statement.

Samsung’s report came a day after SK Hynix also reported a record second-quarter revenue of 60.5 trillion won ($42 billion). However, SK Hynx’s profit was still below the loftier market expectations and the company’s shares declined by more than 9% on Monday. Samsung’s share prices have also declined this week.

While Samsung and SK Hynix have embarked on major investments in semiconductor manufacturing facilities and data centers as South Korea expands its AI ambitions, some analysts say there are growing concerns about whether such massive spending will ultimately generate sufficient returns.

Shares of South Korean chipmakers have also been pressured by concerns over intensifying competition from China, with reports that a state-owned Chinese company had begun mass-producing domestically developed immersion deep-ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, a key technology for advanced chipmaking. Investor concerns were also heightened by the strong stock market debut of Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies, some analysts say.

The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

People pass by Samsung Gangnam store in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

The logo of the Samsung Electronics Co. is seen at its office in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, July 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

LATROBE, Pa. (AP) — Mason Rudolph knows the drill. At this point, maybe a little too well.

The Pittsburgh Steelers begin training camp each summer and Rudolph sits down in a quarterback room that always seems to include a new face or two (or sometimes three) and gamely try to tune out the questions about his seemingly tenuous grasp on a roster spot.

“There's always competition,” Rudolph said Wednesday at the start of his ninth NFL season, eight of them in Pittsburgh. “That's no different this year.”

Rudolph has outlasted a pair of first-round draft picks ( Mitch Trubisky and Kenny Pickett ) and journeymen like Josh Dobbs and Duck Hodges during a career in which he has been frequently reliable, if only rarely remarkable.

While Aaron Rodgers will begin his 21st — and he insists final — year in the NFL atop the Pittsburgh depth chart, who else will run out of the tunnel with him for the season opener against Atlanta in September is anyone's guess, Rudolph's included.

The Steelers took a flier on former Ohio State star Will Howard in the sixth round of the 2025 draft, then grabbed the talented if still unrefined Drew Allar out of Penn State in the third round in April.

The young duo provides coach Mike McCarthy with the kind of raw material he has long loved to mold. Perhaps one of the biggest mysteries of McCarthy's first training camp with the Steelers will be how he views the position behind Rodgers.

Will he rely on the more experienced Rudolph — whose dynamic play down the stretch in 2023 led Pittsburgh to an unlikely postseason berth — as a security blanket should something happen to Rodgers, or will he move on to two guys in their early 20s whose next passes of consequence in the NFL will be their first?

While it's not unthinkable that the Steelers could hold on to four healthy quarterbacks, it is unlikely. No one is more well-versed in the math than Rudolph.

Sure, Rudolph worked with the second team on Wednesday while Howard and Allar split time throwing to players whose stints in Pittsburgh probably will be brief. It hardly matters.

“You've got to, the cliche answer is, keep proving yourself every day, because there’s a new flock of guys coming in each and every year that are great players," Rudolph said. “So I don’t think you’re ever (safe) unless you’re (Rodgers); you're never done proving yourself.”

If anything, Rudolph has proven he's a survivor.

While things haven't quite panned out the way former Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert planned when he said the team had a first-round grade on Rudolph upon selecting him in the third round in 2018, Rudolph has deftly handled every twist and turn along the way.

The player who was kept at a distance by franchise icon Ben Roethlisberger early in his career, who once found himself in the middle of an ugly brawl in Cleveland, who was passed over in favor of Trubisky and Pickett following Roethlisberger's retirement, who wasn't re-signed even after his rousing playoff run, is still around. He'll take it, only too aware of how quickly things can change.

“I think that it's just a fluid deal, it changes every day, which is the same with every training camp,” he said. “There’s a handful of guys on offense that are set-in-stone starters that are highly paid, but just about everybody else is, it’s a ‘What have you done for me lately?’ in practice league and training camp.”

While Rodgers will be the first Pittsburgh quarterback to make consecutive Week 1 starts since Roethlisberger retired in early 2022, he is a temporary fix. A long-term solution at the game's most important position has been elusive for nearly a half-decade.

McCarthy was hired in part to fix that. A meticulous teacher, McCarthy has a reputation as a quarterback guru, and his relationship with Rodgers is one of the many reasons Rodgers will almost certainly don a gold jacket at the Hall of Fame five years after his playing days end.

The coach who runs his own quarterback school revels in each lesson and pores over hours of tape looking for ways to refine things. He has three willing pupils in Rudolph, Howard and Allar, all of whom are trying to absorb whatever they can, whenever they can, from McCarthy and Rodgers, whom Rudolph likened to an old married couple.

Absorbing the lessons is one thing. Putting them into practice on the field is another. Whoever does it the best over the next six weeks will be given the spot behind Rodgers when the games start to count.

Maybe it'll be Rudolph. Maybe it won't. He learned long ago it's unwise to assume anything.

“I think we have a really good room,” he said, then added for good measure in a way that sounded equal parts matter-of-fact and likely wishful thinking, “I’m really looking forward to spending the rest of the season with those guys, for sure.”

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Pittsburgh Steelers quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers (8) blows a bubble while stretching with Will Howard (18) during the NFL team's camp in Latrobe, Pa., Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Pittsburgh Steelers quarterbacks Mason Rudolph, left, and Drew Allar, center, works out during practice at the team's NFL football training camp in Latrobe, Pa., Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)