Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Copilot, Microsoft’s brand of generative AI, will soon be far more deeply integrated into the Windows 11 experience.
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Samsung Electronics said on Tuesday that its operating profit surged more than 930% in the first quarter of 2024, driven by soaring demand for its servers, memory chips and storage used in AI applications.
The company, which struggled in 2023 as the macroeconomic slowdown hurt demand for its products, said its memory chip business returned to profitability, and prices continued to rise thanks to solid demand for DRAM and NAND chips, high-density SSDs and servers.
Samsung said total revenue rose 12.8% to KRW 71.2 trillion ($52.2 billion) in the quarter from a year earlier, while net profit rose 330% to KRW 6.75 trillion ($4.88 billion) compared to a year earlier.
Samsung’s semiconductor business drove the bulk of the improvement, with sales in the division rising to KRW 23.14 trillion ($16.71 billion) in the first quarter, up from KRW 13.73 trillion ($9.92 billion) a year earlier, driven by strong demand for DDR5 chips and storage used for AI servers. The division reported an operating profit of KRW 1.91 trillion ($1.3 billion) in the quarter, compared to an operating loss of KRW 4.58 trillion ($3.3 billion) in the first quarter of 2023, and an operating loss of KRW 2.18 trillion ($1.57 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Samsung has been keen on catering to the increasing compute power needs of generative AI and the servers needed to host the mountains of data that models are trained on. The company last year said it would double down on producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that are used in AI, 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), graphic processing applications, virtual reality and augmented reality systems. These chips provide faster data processing and lower power consumption compared to the traditional NAND memory chips.
In line with that ambition, Samsung on Tuesday said it has begun mass-producing high-performance memory chips, like HBM3E 8H (8-layer) DRAM, as well as V9 NAND chips, typically used in enterprise servers, AI and cloud devices. The company said it also intends to produce HBM3E 12H (12-layer) chips in the second quarter of this year.
Samsung is the world’s largest memory chip maker and competes with Micron and SK Hynix, a Korean memory chip maker, in the market for HBM chips. Micron kicked off its mass production of 8-layer HBM3E semiconductors in February, and last month at NVIDIA’s GTC 2024, SK Hynix said it had also started mass producing HBM3E chips.
As for its foundry business, Samsung said its development of 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer AI chips is “progressing smoothly.”
Samsung anticipates demand will remain strong in the second half of this year, buoyed by increasing adoption of generative AI.
“In the second half of 2024, business conditions are expected to remain positive with demand — mainly around generative AI — holding strong, despite continued volatility relating to macroeconomic trends and geopolitical issues,” the company said in a statement.
“For servers and storage, the continuous increase in the supply of AI servers and subsequent expansion of associated cloud services will increase demand not only for HBM, but also for conventional servers and storage solutions. Demand for mobile is expected to be stable in the quarter, while PC customers are predicted to be affected by slow seasonality, making them likely to adjust their inventories ahead of new product launches in the second half of the year,” the company said.
Two weeks ago, the Biden administration agreed to award Samsung up to $6.4 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to set up semiconductor factories in Texas.
The grant will enable the South Korean electronic giant to develop leading-edge chips by investing in two new logic chip plants, an R&D facility, an advanced packaging facility in Taylor, and its existing facility expansion near Austin. Micron and TSMC also are set to receive grants to bolster domestic semiconductor production.
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at how two fintech companies serving the underserved are faring, and more!
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 7:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.
PayJoy is an example of a company with positive unit economics and a mission to help the underserved. It’s not often that we see those two things intersect, so when we do, we get pretty excited. I wrote about the company’s milestone of achieving $300 million in annualized revenue and profitability last year, while also managing to land $150 million in Series C funding. The company’s model is unique: It helps people build credit through pay-as-you-go financing for smartphones. Once the phones are paid off, customers can apply for loans through PayJoy using their devices as collateral. Read all about its growth here.
Petal is another fintech company that aims to help the underserved “build credit, not debt.” Last May, TechCrunch wrote about the company’s $35 million raise and plans to spin off its data unit. Last week, Empower Finance announced its plans to acquire Petal, which apparently began looking for buyers last year “when it was short on cash,” according to Fortune. A spokesperson for Petal told me via email: “Like Petal, Empower … uses cash flow underwriting for its suite of credit products. … With the Petal acquisition, it will soon have a family of credit cards to complement that offering.” Will we see more M&A in 2024? I’m eager to see.
TransferGo, the U.K.-based fintech best known as a consumer platform for global remittances, has raised a $10 million growth funding round from Taiwan-based investor Taiwania Capital, with a view to expanding in the Asia-Pacific region. It last raised a $50 million Series C funding round in 2021. TransferGo claims its growth, combined with the new investment, doubles its valuation.
Brazilian startup Salvy, a mobile carrier for businesses, was the only company based in Latin America in Y Combinator’s latest batch, the accelerator confirmed to TechCrunch’s Anna Heim. That’s a significant drop compared to cohorts that went through the accelerator during COVID when it was remote, but also more recent classes. For example, there were 33 Latin American companies in Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 batch. Could the overall state of the fintech sector be partly to blame? Historically, around one-third of the 231 Latin American companies that went through YC focused on fintech. And with fintech funding on the decline, this could perhaps partly explain YC’s lack of LatAm interest.
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