On July 28, Samsung Electronics announced today that it had reached a US$16.5 billion chip manufacturing agreement, but did not disclose who the customer was. According to Bloomberg, this big customer is Tesla. Samsung announced on Monday that it has signed a chip manufacturing agreement worth 22.8 trillion won with a large multinational company, which will last until the end of 2033. According to people familiar with the matter, the customer is Tesla, which has already cooperated with Samsung's chip foundry department.
The partnership could help boost Samsung's underperforming chip foundry unit. Currently, Samsung’s share in the chip manufacturing field continues to decline. The company both makes its own brand of memory chips and OEMs chips for customers, but has struggled to get enough orders to fully utilize its foundry capacity.
In contrast, TSMC is in short supply. According to data from research firm TrendForce, in the first quarter of this year, TSMC’s share of the global foundry market was as high as 67.6%, while Samsung’s market share fell to 7.7% from 8.1% in the previous quarter.
Samsung's shares on the Korea Exchange rose as much as 3.5% today, their biggest intraday gain in nearly four weeks. As of press time, a Samsung spokesperson declined to comment on Tesla-related cooperation. Tesla representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.