Samsung logo displayed on a glass door at the company’s Seocho building in Seoul on July 7, 2022. Samsung Electronics has begun applications for tax breaks for 11 potential chip plants in Texas adding up to investments of about $192 billion, according to documents filed with Texas authorities.
The South Korean chip giant claimed the HBM3E 12H “raises both performance and capacity by more than 50%.”
“The industry’s AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H product has been designed to answer that need,” said Yongcheol Bae, executive vice president of memory product planning at Samsung Electronics.
“This new memory solution forms part of our drive toward developing core technologies for high-stack HBM and providing technological leadership for the high-capacity HBM market in the AI era,” said Bae.
Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest maker for dynamic random-access memory chips, which are used in consumer devices such as smartphones and computers.
Generative AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT require large numbers of high-performance memory chips. Such chips enable generative AI models to remember details from past conversations and user preferences in order to generate humanlike responses.
During a call with analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company may not be able to maintain this level of growth or sales for the whole year.
“As AI applications grow exponentially, the HBM3E 12H is expected to be an optimal solution for future systems that require more memory. Its higher performance and capacity will especially allow customers to manage their resources more flexibly and reduce total cost of ownership for datacenters,” said Samsung Electronics.
Samsung said it has started sampling the chip to customers and mass production of the HBM3E 12H is planned for the first half of 2024.
“I assume the news will be positive for Samsung’s share price,” SK Kim, executive director of Daiwa Securities, told CNBC.
“Samsung was behind SK Hynix in HBM3 for Nvidia last year. Also, Micron announced mass production of 24GB 8L HBM3E yesterday. I assume it will secure leadership in higher layer (12L) based higher density (36GB) HBM3E product for Nvidia,” said Kim.
In September, Samsung secured a deal to supply Nvidia with itshigh-bandwidth memory 3 chips, according to a Korea Economic Daily report, which cited anonymous industry sources.
The report also said that SK Hynix, South Korea’s second-biggest memory chipmaker, was leading the high-performance memory chip market. SK Hynix was previously known as the sole mass producer of HBM3 chips supplied to Nvidia, the report said.
Samsung said the HBM3E 12H has a 12-layer stack, but applies advanced thermal compression non-conductive film which allows the 12-layer products to have the same height specification as 8-layer ones to meet current HBM package requirements. The result is a chip that packs more processing power, without increasing its physical footprint.
“Samsung has continued to lower the thickness of its NCF material and achieved the industry’s smallest gap between chips at seven micrometers (µm), while also eliminating voids between layers,” said Samsung. “These efforts result in enhanced vertical density by over 20% compared to its HBM3 8H product.”
HANGZHOU, CHINA – JUNE 3, 2024 – The NVIDIA logo and the Apple logo are pictured in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, China, June 6, 2024. On June 5, Eastern time, Nvidia’s stock market value exceeded $3 trillion, officially surpassing Apple’s market value and becoming the world’s second largest technology giant by market value. It is worth noting that in just over 3 months, Nvidia’s market value soared from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Global technology and chip stocks rallied on Monday after the U.S. and China agreed to pause most tariffs on each other’s goods.
Technology stocks — such as semiconductor firms and smartphone makers — have been hit hard as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies threatened to disrupt supply chains and hurt some of the biggest U.S. businesses.
But investors breathed a sigh of relief after talks between the U.S. and China over the weekend yielded a temporary pause in “reciprocal” tariffs.
In the U.S., Nvidia, which still faces a number of restrictions on the chips it is allowed to ship to China, was around 4% higher in premarket trade, while AMD was up 5%. Broadcom was also around 5% higher, along with Qualcomm.
Other companies in the semiconductor supply chain also jumped. Marvell, which last week postponed a previously scheduled investor day due to macroeconomic uncertainty, surged 7.5% in premarket trade.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chipmaker, saw its U.S.-listed shares jump around 4% in the premarket. TSMC’s Taiwan-listed stock closed before the tariff announcement.
In Europe, ASML, a supplier of critical machinery required to manufacture the most advanced chips, rallied 4.5% in early trade. Infineon was also sharply higher.
Semiconductors and some electronics received an exemption from President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs last month, but the U.S. signaled the reprieve was temporary and that these products could still be in line for special duties.
Investors have been concerned about the impact on major tech stocks, especially those with exposure to China such as Apple and Amazon, whose shares have been under pressure this year.
Amazon was up more than 8% in premarket trade Monday. Many sellers on Amazon rely on Chinese products.
U.S.-listed Chinese tech stocks also surged. Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com were higher, alongside internet firm Baidu.
“With US/China clearly on an accelerated path for a broader deal we believe new highs for the market and tech stocks are now on the table in 2025 as investors will likely focus on the next steps in these trade discussions which will happen over the coming months,” Daniel Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Monday.
“This morning is a huge win for the bulls and a best case scenario post this weekend in our view.”
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”