Samsung May Benefit From Increasing Demand for Google’s TPU Chips

Samsung may emerge as one of the biggest winners from Google’s growing presence in the AI chip market. The Mountain View giant will reportedly supply its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips to big technology companies, including Meta. As such, the chip will need a large number of memory components and a partner for mass production. This is creating new opportunities for the Korean firm’s memory and foundry business.

Google’s Ironwood TPU opens new opportunities for Samsung

Earlier this year, Google introduced Ironwood, its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). This custom AI accelerator is the company’s most powerful, capable, and energy-efficient so far. It runs large AI models quickly and at scale, making it suitable for the next phase of generative AI.

According to a report from Businesskorea, Meta is now discussing plans to use Google’s TPU in its new data centers, scheduled to start operations in 2027. If Meta decides to adopt the chip, this could attract other big tech firms to consider the TPU as well. As such, Google will see increasing demand for its AI accelerators.

So, how will Samsung make money from Google’s TPU demand? First, mass production of Ironwood will require a large and stable supply of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). The current TPU model uses HBM3E from SK Hynix. However, insiders say that once Google begins supplying TPUs to multiple global companies, it may look for an additional memory partner. And Samsung is the potential candidate to join the supply chain.

Samsung may also see increased demand for general-purpose DRAM, such as DDR5 and LPDDR5. The reason is that the advanced AI data centers will need large amounts of DRAM to support TPUs, GPUs, and CPUs. As for the foundry unit, Google may turn to Samsung for manufacturing support. TSMC is currently operating at almost full capacity due to overwhelming orders.