KB Securities Says Samsung Electronics Poised to Gain Most From AI Chip Shakeup After Jensen Huang Exit

Samsung Electronics could emerge as the biggest beneficiary as competition in the artificial intelligence chip market shifts following the departure of former Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, KB Securities said.

In a report released on November 16, KB Securities research head Kim Dong-won said the management change at Nvidia would heighten business uncertainty in the short term but, over the longer term, speed up supply-chain diversification across the AI chip market.

Kim highlighted the possibility that demand once concentrated in Nvidia’s graphics processing units could spread across a broader range of products as Google, Amazon Web Services and AMD accelerate development of their own AI chips. Google’s tensor processing units, AWS’s Trainium, application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, and AMD GPUs are emerging as alternatives to Nvidia products.

The change could also support the high-bandwidth memory market. As demand for AI inference rises and big tech companies push ahead with in-house chip development, HBM demand could expand beyond Nvidia GPUs to ASICs and rival GPUs more broadly.

KB Securities expects Nvidia to account for 35% of Samsung Electronics’ HBM shipments next year. It estimates non-Nvidia customers, including Google, Amazon and AMD, will make up 65%. Over the same period, global HBM demand is forecast at 38% for Nvidia, 37% for Google, 13% for AMD and 12% for others.

Kim also pointed to the growing influence of Google and AMD, two of Samsung Electronics’ key HBM customers, in the AI accelerator market. Their expansion could create favorable conditions for Samsung to increase HBM supply and regain market share.

He also cited rising memory demand tied to the expansion of the ASIC market as another positive factor. Demand could rise not only for customized HBM tailored to client needs, but also for server DRAM and high-capacity memory. Kim said Samsung Electronics, with a higher share of customers outside Nvidia, stands to benefit the most as the AI chip supply chain diversifies.