三星电机签下约1.07万亿韩元AI服务器MLCC供货合同

Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150) has signed its largest-ever supply contract, worth more than 1 trillion won, with a global technology company, sharply expanding sales of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), a core component in artificial intelligence chips. With MLCC demand surging as big tech firms race to develop AI chips, the company plans to combine large supply contracts with expanded production capacity to seize an early lead in the market.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics said on the 1st that it had signed a 1.0722 trillion won ($760 million) contract to supply MLCCs for AI servers to a global technology company. The company will supply MLCCs mounted on AI chips produced by that customer over a one-year period starting next year. It is the largest MLCC supply contract Samsung Electro-Mechanics has ever signed, more than double the previous record of about 450 billion won in June.
The contract puts specific terms on part of a long-term agreement (LTA) of up to five years that the two companies signed earlier. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has signed similar LTAs with about 10 global companies, and additional supply contracts ranging from several hundred billion won to several trillion won are expected to follow, sources said. Including the 450 billion won deal in June, a 300 billion won deal in July and the latest 1.0722 trillion won contract, the company has booked a cumulative 3.32 trillion won in MLCC orders so far this year.
MLCCs supply and control electric current in electronic circuits. Once used mainly in smartphones and PCs, they have become essential components in AI chips and servers, including Nvidia graphics processing units. The components division, which houses the MLCC business, accounted for 45.9% of Samsung Electro-Mechanics' total revenue in the first half of this year. Helped by MLCC growth, the company posted first-half revenue of 6.6663 trillion won and operating profit of 720.9 billion won, up 20.6% and 74.3% from a year earlier.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics holds more than 40% of the market for MLCCs used in AI servers. Unlike conventional MLCCs, those for AI servers must operate reliably around the clock in high-temperature, high-voltage environments, making them harder to develop. The company secured an early lead with its own technology. According to Goldman Sachs, the market for AI server MLCCs is expected to grow to $5.8 billion (about 7.9 trillion won) by 2030 from $1.4 billion (about 1.9 trillion won) last year.
With utilization at its components production lines reaching 91% as of the end of June, Samsung Electro-Mechanics is also accelerating capacity expansion to respond quickly to demand from big tech customers. It plans to start operating a third MLCC plant under construction in Calamba, Laguna province, in the Philippines at the end of the first quarter next year, just 15 months after securing the site. Industry officials said that marks a far faster timeline than Japanese rival Murata, which broke ground on a production line in early 2024 and completed it in April this year, about two years later. Along with the new Philippine plant, the company plans to expand MLCC production lines at its domestic plant in Busan, lifting annual capacity by as much as 20%.
"This contract is the result of global customers recognizing Samsung Electro-Mechanics' technology and supply stability," a company official said. "We will expand supply of high-reliability MLCCs for AI servers and secure firm leadership in the AI market."
Alongside MLCCs, Samsung Electro-Mechanics plans to expand production capacity for flip-chip ball grid array (FC-BGA) high-density package substrates at a new Vietnamese plant built with an investment of 1.8 trillion won, targeting the broader market for AI chip components.