"Spent More in Crisis": Samsung Pours 90 Trillion Won Annually, Dominates Semiconductor Investment Rankings

SK hynix Ranks Fourth with 35 Trillion Won Investment
Samsung and SK hynix Lay the Foundation for the "Supercycle" with 125 Trillion Won Annual Investment
R&D-to-Sales Ratio at Only Half of Intel’s Remains a Challenge

It has been revealed that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, the two pillars of Korea's semiconductor industry, are leading the global market by pouring in an astronomical 125 trillion won annually into facilities and research and development (R&D). In particular, Samsung Electronics is being evaluated as having built a solid foundation for maintaining its technological lead, recording the largest investment scale among the world's top 10 semiconductor companies.

Yonhap News Agency

According to a study released on June 10 by the corporate data research institute CEO Score, which looked at the R&D and facility investment (CAPEX) status of the world’s top 10 semiconductor companies over the past five years (2021–2025), Samsung Electronics ranked first globally last year by investing a total of 89.8935 trillion won. This figure exceeds the second-ranked Taiwan-based TSMC’s investment (69.4109 trillion won) by more than 20 trillion won. SK hynix also secured fourth place worldwide with an investment of 35.045 trillion won.

The most notable aspect of Samsung Electronics’ investment moves is that the company has actually expanded its investments even amid the industry downturn. The combined amount of R&D and facility investment by Samsung Electronics steadily increased over five years, rising from 72.2307 trillion won in 2021, to 78.0459 trillion won in 2022, 88.8739 trillion won in 2023, 88.7398 trillion won in 2024, and 89.8935 trillion won in 2025.

In particular, even in 2023, when the semiconductor downturn peaked and operating profit plunged to about 6.567 trillion won, Samsung Electronics still invested as much as 88.8739 trillion won. This amount is equivalent to 13.5 times its operating profit for that year; by comparison, the investment in 2021, when results were strong, was 1.4 times its operating profit. This demonstrates that Samsung Electronics continued to invest aggressively even during crisis to maintain its “super-gap” in technology over global competitors.

Looking solely at R&D investment last year, Samsung Electronics set a new record with 37.7404 trillion won. This was followed by Nvidia (26.3347 trillion won) and Intel (19.6044 trillion won), while SK hynix ranked eighth with 6.4656 trillion won.

Despite these globally top-scale investment levels by Korea’s semiconductor giants, a look at their “R&D investment as a percentage of revenue” reveals some shortcomings in terms of technological development competitiveness. Compared with major U.S. chip vendors, they ranked relatively lower.

As of last year, Intel had the highest R&D-to-revenue ratio at 26.1%, followed by AMD (23.4%), Qualcomm (20.4%), Broadcom (17.2%), and Texas Instruments (11.8%). In contrast, Samsung Electronics remained in sixth place at 11.3%, while SK hynix ranked ninth at 6.7%, which is only half or less that of Intel.

In terms of total investment (R&D + facility investment) as a percentage of total revenue, Intel (53.8%) and Micron (52.6%) stood out by investing more than half of their revenue, followed by TSMC (39.9%), Texas Instruments (37.5%), SK hynix (36.1%), and Samsung Electronics (26.9%).

However, CEO Score noted, “This survey includes fabless, foundry, memory, and integrated device manufacturer (IDM) companies, so there may be structural differences in investment depending on the business model.” The institute explained that there are limits to making simple comparisons between companies like Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and TSMC, which own production facilities, and design-centered companies such as Nvidia and AMD.

Meanwhile, considering that the semiconductor industry must continue tens of trillions of won in astronomical investments annually just to survive, the recent controversy over tens of trillions of won in performance bonuses and retained earnings distribution—which is emerging against the backdrop of the current semiconductor super-boom—seems likely to become a significant management burden for domestic semiconductor companies in the future.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.