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Samsung Electronics Co., led by South Korean billionaire Jay Y. Lee, has broken ground on a $900 million plant to package high-bandwidth memory chips at its Onyang campus and raised its planned investment in the country's central Chungcheong region to 144 trillion won ($107 billion).
Lee attended the groundbreaking in Asan, South Chungcheong province, where Samsung plans to turn the Onyang site into a hub for advanced chip packaging. In a welcoming address, he recalled that the site was bare hills and unpaved roads 40 years ago.
The new plant will handle advanced packaging for HBM, the stacked memory chips that sit beside processors in artificial intelligence servers. Packaging has become a bottleneck in AI chip supply, as each HBM stack requires several layers of memory to be bonded and tested before it ships to customers such as Nvidia Corp.
A bigger regional bet
In July, Samsung group companies outlined plans to invest about $90 billion in the Chungcheong region over the coming years for chips, displays and batteries. That program included new HBM packaging lines. The latest increase to 144 trillion won raises that commitment as Samsung races to expand output of memory for AI data centers.
Samsung has been pushing to regain ground in HBM after trailing domestic rival SK Hynix Inc. in the early stages of the AI boom. Earlier this year, it began mass shipments of its sixth-generation HBM4 chips to Nvidia. SK Hynix has announced its own packaging investments in the same region.
Lee's turnaround push
Lee, 58, became chairman of Samsung Electronics in October 2022. He is the grandson of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul and the son of the late chairman Lee Kun-hee, who turned the company into the world's largest memory chipmaker.
Since his appointment, Lee has spent heavily to defend Samsung's lead in memory and to expand its contract chipmaking business. Forbes ranks him as South Korea's richest person, with a fortune built mainly on his family's stakes in Samsung affiliates.
Figures were converted at 1,340 won to the dollar.
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