The World Has a New $1T Company

Samsung just muscled its way into an exclusive club: it's now a $1 trillion company, reports CNBC. Shares in Samsung Electronics jumped more than 15% on Wednesday, sending the South Korean giant's market value past the trillion-dollar point and to a record high, on track for its biggest one-day gain ever. It's only the second Asian firm to hit that mark, after chip rival TSMC. The surge follows blowout first-quarter results, with operating profit more than eight times higher at $39.5 trillion and revenue hitting a record $92.5 trillion—profit for the quarter even topped the company's full-year 2025 haul.

The rally is being powered by red-hot demand for AI-related memory chips and tight supply, which analysts say should keep earnings and margins strong over the next couple of years. Samsung is racing rival SK Hynix in the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in AI data centers, and in February claimed the first mass production of next-gen HBM4 chips, which are expected to feed Nvidia. A Bloomberg report that Apple is exploring US chip production with Samsung and Intel added to the momentum; TechCrunch notes that landing that deal "would mark a significant shift in the global semiconductor supply chain." SK Hynix shares also leapt more than 10% on Wednesday, helping push South Korea's Kospi index above 7,000 for the first time.