Samsung approves record shareholder return of up to $79.6 billion on AI chip boom

Samsung Electronics’ board approved a shareholder return of 90 trillion to 110 trillion won (about $65 billion to $79.6 billion) for 2026, the company said on Aug. 21. It is the largest such program ever by a Korean company.

The payout is roughly five times Samsung’s previous record of 20.3 trillion won, set in 2020, and reflects how thoroughly the artificial-intelligence buildout has reshaped the chip maker’s balance sheet.

The return follows an 89.2 trillion won operating profit at the company’s chip division in the second quarter of 2026, driven by demand for high-bandwidth memory, or HBM — the stacked chips that feed data-hungry AI accelerators. Rival SK hynix recently announced a large buyback of its own on the same memory boom.

For the third quarter, the board approved about 30 trillion won in cash dividends; the balance of the dividend-and-buyback allocation will be finalized at a board meeting late in 2026 or early in 2027. Samsung also cleared about 15 trillion won in share purchases tied to employee compensation.

Across 2024 to 2026, Samsung now projects total shareholder returns of up to 140 trillion won, or roughly $101 billion.

The scale of the return signals confidence that AI memory demand will hold, even as the figures depend on chip prices that have historically swung hard. Samsung has framed the program as a direct return of its memory windfall to shareholders.