SEOUL — Samsung Electronics reported a sharp rise in third-quarter operating profit on Thursday, driven by surging demand for high-bandwidth memory chips used in artificial intelligence servers.

The company's semiconductor division led the recovery, with memory prices climbing as data-centre operators raced to secure supply. Samsung confirmed it had expanded shipments of its HBM3E chips and accelerated qualification of next-generation HBM4 products for major customers including Nvidia.

The earnings follow a period in which Samsung lagged rival SK Hynix in the premium HBM segment. Samsung executives said on an earnings call that bottlenecks in qualification had eased and that memory contract prices had risen through the quarter as DRAM and NAND shortages tightened across the industry.

Counterpoint Research had forecast strong memory earnings, pointing to record capital spending by cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon. The results reinforced investor confidence that the memory upcycle driven by AI infrastructure will continue into 2027.

Samsung also reiterated plans to increase capital expenditure on advanced memory capacity, signalling continued competition with SK Hynix and Micron for AI-related supply contracts.