The world’s largest PC maker said fourth-quarter revenue rose 27% to $21.6 billion for the period ended March, beating analysts’ expectations of $18.7 billion. Profit attributable to shareholders climbed 479% to $521 million, above forecasts of $271 million.

Its shares jumped 15% on Friday, making it the biggest gainer on Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index.

Lenovo’s biggest business unit, which covers PCs, tablets and smartphones, recorded a 24% increase in revenue. The company said it was the division’s strongest quarterly growth in five years.

The results came as PC makers are currently dealing with high memory prices and supply shortages. Lenovo had earlier warned that the shortage could affect shipments across the industry. The company has also raised prices on some PCs to manage higher component costs.

“Supply (of memory chips) is in heavy shortage, and the cost is growing faster,” Lenovo Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing told Reuters on Friday.

He added that Lenovo’s wider supplier network, including Chinese memory chip producers, helped reduce pressure on the business.

Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies recently identified Lenovo as one of its major customers in a prospectus filing. The chipmaker also reported more than 700% growth in first-quarter revenue as memory prices surged.

According to forecasts, memory chip prices doubled in the first quarter and could rise by as much as 63% this quarter. Demand from data centres has tightened supply for laptops, smartphones and cars.

Lenovo said its PC shipment growth outpaced the market by nearly six percentage points during the quarter. Research firm Counterpoint Research said global PC shipments rose 3.2% in the first quarter to 63.3 million units, while Lenovo’s shipments increased 9% to 16.5 million units. That gave the company a 26% share of the global market.

The company is also expanding its server business. Lenovo said its infrastructure solutions group, which includes its server operations, posted 37% revenue growth in the quarter, the fastest among all its business units.

It added that its server order pipeline had reached $21 billion as demand for data centre equipment continued to grow.

The surge places the South Korean firm among the world’s most valuable technology companies and only the second in Asia to reach that level after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

In early trading in Seoul, Samsung’s value climbed to about 1,500 trillion won, or roughly $1.03 trillion. Shares rose by around 12% to 14%, extending a rally that has built steadily over the past year.

Trading volumes picked up as investors reacted to the latest growth in artificial intelligence-linked stocks in the United States overnight.

The South Korean market also moved strongly. The Kospi index jumped more than 5%, pushing above the 7,000 level for the first time. Semiconductor peers SK Hynix and global chip giant TSMC also held near record highs, as the global appetite for AI computing power continues to lift the sector.

Samsung, alongside SK Hynix and TSMC, supplies much of the memory and processing capacity behind data centres and advanced computing systems.

That position has helped shift global investor attention towards Asia’s chipmakers, particularly as demand for high-performance memory continues to tighten.

“The trillion-dollar threshold carries material weight beyond the symbolism,” said Dave Mazza, chief executive officer at Roundhill Investments in New York. “More broadly, it reflects a market judgment that memory’s role in the AI infrastructure stack is structural, not cyclical.”

Recent financial performance has strengthened that view, as Samsung’s semiconductor division recorded a sharp growth in profit in the March quarter, rising about 48 times compared with the previous year.

The company attributed the performance to strong orders from AI data centres and higher contract prices across memory products.

Market analysts expect the growth to continue, but supply in the memory chip industry is still tight, and pricing trends have moved upward.

Sam Konrad, investment manager at Jupiter Asset Management, said: “If investors do some work on Samsung Electronics we think they will conclude that the investment opportunity is attractive even if they have missed its performance up until now,” said Sam Konrad, investment manager at Jupiter Asset Management.

“The memory market is currently undersupplied, and Samsung said that 2027 will see tighter supply and demand than 2026, so prices for NAND and DRAM are likely to continue rising.”

There is also growing interest from outside the semiconductor sector. Reports show that Apple has held discussions about using Samsung to manufacture key processors in the United States, potentially reducing reliance on its long-term partner TSMC.

Foreign investors have played a noticeable role in the latest rally, boosting Samsung valuation. Market data showed net inflows of about 3.1 trillion won into Kospi equities in a single day.

The South Korean won also strengthened, gaining more than 1% against the US dollar to become one of the strongest Asian currencies in the session.

Global views have also supported the move. On Wall Street, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at record highs, with semiconductor and AI-related stocks leading gains.

Despite the strong performance, Samsung’s mobile and display divisions are facing challenges from high material costs and competition. At the same time, labour tensions have emerged, with workers reportedly threatening an 18-day general strike over profit sharing linked to the chip boom.

Even so, market expectations are upbeat. Analysts estimate Samsung’s share price could rise further over the next year, with projections of about 22% upside. The stock currently trades at roughly six times forward earnings, down from over 14 times last year.

Samsung’s rise, together with SK Hynix, has helped make South Korea one of the most closely watched equity markets globally. Together, the two firms account for a large share of the Kospi index and enhance its direction.

Mark Davids, APAC head of emerging markets and Asia Pacific equities at JPMorgan Asset Management, said: “Samsung’s profits reflect a very unusual period where these companies can achieve outsized profits,” he said.

The South Korean chipmaker said on Thursday that the new chips are already being delivered, though it did not name customers. 

This comes as demand for high-bandwidth memory steeply increases, driven by the global build-out of data centres used to train and run advanced artificial intelligence systems.

HBM is a form of dynamic random-access memory designed to handle very large volumes of data at high speed. It has become an essential component in modern AI processors. 

Samsung, the world’s largest memory chipmaker by revenue, has struggled in recent years to keep pace with competitors in earlier generations of the technology.

The company said its HBM4 chips provide a consistent processing speed of 11.7 gigabits per second, about 22% faster than the previous HBM3E version. It added that the chips can reach a maximum speed of 13 gigabits per second, easing data bottlenecks as workloads grow heavier.

Samsung also said it plans to provide samples of its next version, HBM4E, in the second half of the year.

Sources say Samsung began mass production and shipments of HBM4 chips in February 2026, with Nvidia graphics processors among the key targets.

Those chips are expected to power Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin AI accelerator platform, due for launch in the second half of the year.

The HBM4 chips are built on a 4-nanometre logic process and offer capacities between 24 and 36 gigabytes, with plans to scale up to 48 gigabytes. 

Samsung says the new generation delivers up to 3 terabytes per second of bandwidth per stack, roughly 2.4 times that of HBM3E, alongside a 40% improvement in power efficiency and better thermal control.

Competition in the market is getting tighter. SK Hynix said in January that it aims to maintain its “overwhelming” market share in next-generation HBM4 chips, which it said were already in volume production. 

The company added that it plans to achieve production yields for HBM4 in line with those of HBM3E.

Micron has also moved early. The company’s chief financial officer said it is in high-volume production of HBM4 and has begun shipping the chips to customers.

Samsung’s new focus underlines a catch-up initiative after falling behind in earlier HBM cycles. Investors welcomed the update. Samsung shares ended the day up 6.4%.

Memory bandwidth has become just as important as processing power in modern data centres, and demand is not falling behind. Companies are expanding AI capacity worldwide.

This is an important step for Samsung as it tries to close the gap with SK Hynix, its long-time competition and the top supplier of advanced memory used in Nvidia’s accelerators. 

Delays in Samsung’s earlier HBM programmes weighed heavily on its earnings and share price last year. This time, the company is moving faster and with more at stake.

The initial production run is tied to months of qualification testing with Nvidia and AMD. Samsung cleared those tests late last year, opening the door to commercial shipments in early 2026. The company has not disclosed volumes, and it is unclear how quickly supply will scale.

Samsung declined to comment on the development. Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment.

Following the development, Samsung shares rose more than 2% in early trading, while SK Hynix shares slipped by nearly 3%. Investors are reading this as a sign that competition in the HBM market is about to increase.

HBM4 is the sixth generation of high-bandwidth memory, designed to handle the heavy data loads of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. 

Compared with HBM3E, it gives higher bandwidth while using less power. That combination is important as chipmakers push systems harder to train and run ever-larger models.

For Nvidia, memory supply is now a strategic issue, not just a technical one. The company’s next platform, Vera Rubin, is already in production and will rely on HBM4 to achieve its performance targets. 

As Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang said earlier this month, the platform is in “full production,” ahead of a launch later this year.

Until now, SK Hynix has carried most of that burden. It supplies the bulk of the HBM used in Nvidia’s current accelerators and has already locked in supply talks with major customers for next year. 

The company is also expanding capacity, with plans to start deploying wafers into its new M15X factory in Cheongju early next month. It has not said whether HBM4 will be part of that first output.

Micron is also pushing into the space, adding pressure to an already tight market. Demand for high-bandwidth memory is surging as data centres scale up, and analysts expect the market to grow sharply over the next few years.

Samsung’s entry into HBM4 production changes the balance. It gives Nvidia and AMD another qualified supplier, reduces the risk of shortages, and may help cool pricing pressures. It is a chance for Samsung to regain ground in a segment it cannot afford to miss.

Both Samsung and SK Hynix are due to report quarterly earnings later this week. Investors will be listening for any detail on HBM4 orders, production timelines and customer commitments.