Samsung Boosts China Factory Spending to Meet Memory Demand

Samsung is seeing massive demand for memory chips as AI drives global growth. The company is investing heavily in its factory in China to increase production capabilities. This will allow the firm to meet increasing global demand while solidifying its position in the booming memory market.

Samsung continues to increase investments in its China chip factory

According to the Financial Supervisory Service (via Sedaily), Samsung invested 465.4 billion won in its Xi’an, China, plant in 2025. This is a 67.5% increase from the 277.8 billion won spent in 2024. Xi’an factory is the company’s only NAND flash plant abroad, making nearly 40% of all its NAND output.

While Samsung previously invested about 698.4 billion won in Xi’an in 2019, it made no major investments from 2020 to 2023. The company resumed spending in 2024 and further increased last year to elevate local production lines. Interestingly, this comes despite the US export restrictions. The reason is that global demand for memory chips is too high to ignore.

This year’s production of DRAM and NAND flash is already out of stock. UBS Securities predicts that the global semiconductor market will reach $1 trillion (about 1,496 trillion won) in 2026. This is more than 40% higher than last year. To meet this demand, Samsung plans to upgrade its Xi’an plant from 128-layer (6th generation) NAND to 236-layer (8th generation) NAND.

“To prevent the leakage of national core technologies, overseas factories will have a process difference of about two generations compared to domestic ones,” said an industry official. “As Samsung is scheduled to produce 400-layer (10th generation) NAND products domestically this year, the transition of its Chinese factories to the 8th generation will accelerate.”

Meanwhile, SK Hynix is also making large investments in its Chinese factories to increase production and improve technology. Last year, the company spent over 1 trillion won on its DRAM plant in Wuxi and its NAND flash subsidiary in Dalian.