Headquarters of Samsung in Mountain View, California, on October 28, 2018.
Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a second-quarter operating profit of 4.7 trillion Korean won, missing expectations, weighed by a 93.8% profit slump in its chip business.
While Samsung’s second-quarter operating profit beat its own forecast of around 4.6 trillion won, it was a steep drop from the 10.44 trillion won recorded in the same period last year.
The South Korean technology giant posted a quarterly revenue of 74.6 trillion won, up slightly from 74.07 trillion won a year earlier and beating its forecast of 74 trillion won.
Here are Samsung’s second-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:
Revenue: 74.6 trillion won ($53.5 billion) vs. 74.43 trillion won
Operating profit: 4.7 trillion won vs. 5.33 trillion won
Shares of Samsung fell by as much as 1.79% in early trading.
Notably, its Device Solutions division, which encompasses its memory chip, semiconductor design and foundry business units, recorded a 93.8% drop in operating profit year over year.
Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of 400 billion won in the second quarter, plunging from 6.45 trillion won in the same period last year. Chip revenue fell to 27.9 trillion won, from 28.56 trillion won last year.
“Inventory value adjustments in memory and one-off costs related to the impacts of export restrictions related to China in non-memory had an adverse effect on profit,” the company said in a statement.
However, speaking in an earnings call, Samsung’s chief financial officer Soon-cheol Park voiced some optimism for the company in the near term.
“Despite ongoing global economic concerns driven by uncertain trade policies and geopolitical tensions, the IT industry appears poised for a gradual recovery fueled by increasing momentum in AI and robotics,” he said.
“In this context, we anticipate a rebound in our performance in the second half, following a bottoming out in the second quarter, with the earnings expected to improve steadily as the year progresses,” he added.
Foundry hopes, memory woes
Samsung’s foundry business could receive a boost in the following quarters from a $16.5 billion contract to supply chips to a major company in a deal announced on Monday.
While Samsung did not initially disclose the counterparty, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that it was his American electric vehicle maker, and that the so-called AI6 chips would be made at Samsung’s upcoming fab in Taylor, Texas. The deal could be even larger than what’s been announced, Musk added.
The main aim of the Tesla deal for Samsung could be attracting other potential customers to its foundry business, Nam Hyung Kim, research partner and equity research analyst at Arete, told CNBC.
However, “production costs at the Taylor site are expected to be significantly higher than those in Korea,” he said, adding that it is far too early to conclude the deal will improve Samsung’s position against market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Samsung’s foundry business is currently at a “critical juncture between survival and profitability,” Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, said in a pre-earnings statement.
Samsung, meanwhile, has been dealing with increased competition in its memory business, which makes chips used to store data in everything from servers to consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops. The company has traditionally been the market leader in the space.
But Samsung’s strength in memory is being threatened as it falls behind rival SK Hynix in high bandwidth memory, or HBM — a type of memory used for artificial intelligence computing.
A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month found that SK Hynix had caught up with Samsung’s memory revenues in the second quarter, with both now vying for the top position in the global memory market.
In the second half of the year, Samsung said it plans to proactively meet the growing demand for high-value-added and AI-driven products and continue to strengthen competitiveness in advanced semiconductors.
Galaxy sales lift mobile earnings
Samsung’s mobile experience and networks businesses, tasked with developing and selling smartphones, tablets, wearables and other devices, reported an uptickin sales and profit.
The unit posted an operating profit of 3.1 trillion won for the second quarter, compared to 2.23 trillion won during the same period last year.
Consolidated revenue for the unit reached 29.2 trillion won, up from 27.38 trillion won last year.
Samsung said that both revenue and operating profit grew year over year through robust sales of its Galaxy S25 series and Galaxy A series smartphones, as well as its Galaxy tablets.
“In H2 2025, the [mobile experience business] plans to continue a flagship-first approach for smartphone sales focusing on foldables and the Galaxy S25 series — while emphasizing the AI functionality of the Galaxy A series — to increase market share,” Samsung added.
Samsung successfully defended its leading position in the global smartphone market in the second quarter, according to a report from technology research firm Canalys, now part of Omdia. Samsung claimed a 19% market share by unit sales, predominantly thanks to sales of its Galaxy A series.
A screen showing the price of various cryptocurrencies against the US dollar displayed at a Crypto Panda cryptocurrency store in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025.
Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The crypto market slid Friday after President Donald Trump unveiled his modified “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of countries.
The price of bitcoin showed relative strength, hovering at the flat line while ether, XRP and Binance Coin fell 2% each. Overnight, bitcoin dropped to a low of $114,110.73.
The descent triggered a wave of long liquidations, which forces traders to sell their assets at market price to settle their debts, pushing prices lower. Bitcoin saw $172 million in liquidations across centralized exchanges in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass, and ether saw $210 million.
Crypto-linked stocks suffered deeper losses. Coinbase led the way, down 15% following its disappointing second-quarter earnings report. Circle fell 4%, Galaxy Digital lost 2%, and ether treasury company Bitmine Immersion was down 8%. Bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy was down by 5%.
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Bitcoin falls below $115,000
The stock moves came amid a new wave of risk off sentiment after President Trump issued new tariffs ranging between 10% and 41%, triggering worries about increasing inflation and the Federal Reserve’s ability to cut interest rates. In periods of broad based derisking, crypto tends to get hit as investors pull out of the most speculative and volatile assets. Technical resilience and institutional demand for bitcoin and ether are helping support their prices.
“After running red hot in July, this is a healthy strategic cooldown. Markets aren’t reacting to a crisis, they’re responding to the lack of one,” said Ben Kurland, CEO at crypto research platform DYOR. “With no new macro catalyst on the horizon, capital is rotating out of speculative assets and into safer ground … it’s a calculated pause.”
Crypto is coming off a winning month but could soon hit the brakes amid the new macro uncertainty, and in a month usually characterized by lower trading volumes and increased volatility. Bitcoin gained 8% in July, according to Coin Metrics, while ether surged more than 49%.
Ether ETFs saw more than $5 billion in inflows in July alone (with just a single day of outflows of $1.8 million on July 2), bringing it’s total cumulative inflows to $9.64 to date. Bitcoin ETFs saw $114 million in outflows in the final trading session of July, bringing its monthly inflows to about $6 billion out of a cumulative $55 billion.
Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai gestures to the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 20, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Google has purged more than 50 organizations related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, from a list of organizations that the tech company provides funding to, according to a new report.
The company has removed a total of 214 groups from its funding list while adding 101, according to a new report from tech watchdog organization The Tech Transparency Project. The watchdog group cites the most recent public list of organizations that receive the most substantial contributions from Google’s U.S. Government Affairs and Public Policy team.
The largest category of purged groups were DEI-related, with a total of 58 groups removed from Google’s funding list, TTP found. The dropped groups had mission statements that included the words “diversity, “equity,” “inclusion,” or “race,” “activism,” and “women.” Those are also terms the Trump administration officials have reportedly told federal agencies to limit or avoid.
In response to the report, Google spokesperson José Castañeda told CNBC that the list reflects contributions made in 2024 and that it does not reflect all contributions made by other teams within the company.
“We contribute to hundreds of groups from across the political spectrum that advocate for pro-innovation policies, and those groups change from year to year based on where our contributions will have the most impact,” Castañeda said in an email.
Organizations that were removed from Google’s list include the African American Community Service Agency, which seeks to “empower all Black and historically excluded communities”; the Latino Leadership Alliance, which is dedicated to “race equity affecting the Latino community”; and Enroot, which creates out-of-school experiences for immigrant kids.
The organization funding purge is the latest to come as Google began backtracking some of its commitments to DEI over the last couple of years. That pull back came due to cost cutting to prioritize investments into artificial intelligence technology as well as the changing political and legal landscape amid increasing national anti-DEI policies.
Over the past decade, Silicon Valley and other industries used DEI programs to root out bias in hiring, promote fairness in the workplace and advance the careers of women and people of color — demographics that have historically been overlooked in the workplace.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to end affirmative action at colleges led to additional backlash against DEI programs in conservative circles.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order upon taking office in January to end the government’s DEI programs and directed federal agencies to combat what the administration considers “illegal” private-sector DEI mandates, policies and programs. Shortly after, Google’s Chief People Officer Fiona Cicconi told employees that the company would end DEI-related hiring “aspirational goals” due to new federal requirements and Google’s categorization as a federal contractor.
Despite DEI becoming such a divisive term, many companies are continuing the work but using different language or rolling the efforts under less-charged terminology, like “learning” or “hiring.”
Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai maintained the importance diversity plays in its workforce at an all-hands meeting in March.
“We’re a global company, we have users around the world, and we think the best way to serve them well is by having a workforce that represents that diversity,” Pichai said at the time.
One of the groups dropped from Google’s contributions list is the National Network to End Domestic Violence, which provides training, assistance, and public awareness campaigns on the issue of violence against women, the TTP report found. The group had been on Google’s list of funded organizations for at least nine years and continues to name the company as one of its corporate partners.
Google said it still gave $75,000 to the National Network to End Domestic Violence in 2024 but did not say why the group was removed from the public contributions list.
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, attending the annual Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 9, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Palantir has inked a contract with the U.S. Army worth up to $10 billion to meet growing warfare demands over the next decade.
As part of the deal, Palantir will help the military streamline efficiencies while preparing for threats, consolidating 75 total contracts into one enterprise deal, the release states.
The agreement creates a “comprehensive framework for the Army’s future software and data needs” that provides the government with purchasing flexibility and removes contract-related fees and procurement timelines, according to a release.
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The deal further cements the company’s role in the U.S. government’s clampdown on cost efficiencies by using artificial intelligence tools in President Donald Trump‘s administration. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut jobs and programs in an effort to curb spending.
Palantir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp has been a vocal proponent of protecting U.S. interests and joining forces on AI to fend off adversaries.
Shares of the Denver-based artificial intelligence software company have more than doubled year to date.
Earlier this year, Palantir delivered its first two AI-powered systems in its $178 million contract with the U.S. Army. In May, the Department of Defense boosted its Maven Smart Systems contract to beef up AI capabilities by $795 million.