Samsung Electronics Co. announced an aggressive five-year plan to lure United States-based chip buyers with more advanced technology, aiming to produce transistors that are just 1.4 nanometers wide by 2027.
The company’s chip contract-manufacturing unit—known as a foundry—is looking to triple its revenue by that year from the 2021 level, Executive Vice President Moonsoo Kang said at a briefing Monday in San Jose, California. To get there, the business will need to make several technological leaps and further inroads in the US market for outsourced chips.
Samsung shares rose 4 percent in Seoul on Tuesday after falling by almost a third this year with rising costs and a downturn in the memory market.
The Suwon-based company is the world’s largest chipmaker by revenue, but its foundry business is playing catch-up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which has a commanding lead in the market and top-of-the-line production capabilities. Samsung recently lost out to TSMC on an Nvidia Corp. order to produce the RTX 40 series of graphics cards, which moved to a 4-nanometer process.
Originally a latecomer to the foundry business, Samsung’s been in a hurry to advance its technology ahead of expanding capacity. The Korean chipmaker now sees its 3nm chip process as its “game changer,” Kang said, and first started production at that node ahead of TSMC. It’s pouring three times more resources into 3nm production than it did with previous tech generations in an effort to meet client demand.