Samsung Electronics is aggressively pivoting to the center of the artificial intelligence revolution, leveraging its advanced foundry capabilities to challenge the long-standing dominance of TSMC. Recent industry reports indicate that the South Korean giant’s foundry division has amassed a staggering mid-to-long-term order backlog approaching 50 trillion won (approximately $36 billion). This surge is driven by a prestigious roster of clients, including Tesla, Meta, and the AI safety pioneer Anthropic, all of whom are increasingly looking to Samsung for their next-generation silicon needs.
The cornerstone of this momentum is Samsung’s most advanced 2-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process. Meta, which previously relied on TSMC for its first two generations of the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA), has reportedly tapped Samsung for its third-generation MTIA chips. This strategic shift is part of Meta’s broader ambition to build out 5 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2030 and reduce its reliance on external chip vendors by iterating its proprietary hardware every six months.
Anthropic is also following a similar trajectory of infrastructure independence. The AI firm is evaluating Samsung’s 2nm process to develop custom Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), aiming to diminish its dependence on NVIDIA’s GPUs and Google’s TPUs. Industry analysts suggest that Anthropic’s planned $50 billion investment in AI data centers will require a sophisticated mix of logic, DRAM, and NAND flash—a trifecta that Samsung is uniquely positioned to provide as a vertically integrated semiconductor powerhouse.
For Samsung, these high-stakes partnerships represent more than just revenue; they are a vital lifeline for a foundry business that has struggled with yield issues and market share in recent years. By securing anchor clients for its 2nm node, Samsung is demonstrating that its Gate-All-Around (GAA) architecture is ready for the rigors of large-scale AI workloads. If successful, this influx of orders could propel the foundry division back into profitability as early as the fourth quarter of this year, signaling a significant shift in the global semiconductor landscape.