Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-Yong Visits Taiwan to Meet with MediaTek, Seeking to Expand Wafer Foundry Client Base

According to digitimes, sources from the supply chain have revealed that Lee Jae-yong, the chairman of Samsung Electronics, along with several high-level executives, have quietly visited Taiwan, with key stops including a trip to MediaTek headquarters to meet with CEO Rick Tsai and other senior managers.

Industry insiders believe that the timing of Lee's visit is highly sensitive and the level of delicacy is rare, reflecting the reality that Samsung is facing simultaneous pressures in multiple key arenas of the high-bandwidth memory (HBM), wafer foundry, advanced packaging, and AI server supply chain in the AI era.

Well-informed sources point out that the core purpose of Lee's trip is not to cooperate on a single product but to continue Samsung's recent negotiation strategy of "bundling DRAM production capacity with wafer foundry services", in an attempt to attract MediaTek as a heavyweight foundry customer following Tesla and AMD. Samsung hopes to use its rare supply capabilities of DRAM as leverage to promote the simultaneous adoption of its wafer foundry services by customers.

Despite being aware of Samsung's inadequate yield rates in advanced processes, AMD and Tesla have chosen to invest in wafers ahead of schedule. External analysis suggests that, in addition to stabilizing HBM and DRAM supply, another important consideration is to diversify the risk of relying too heavily on TSMC's capacity. In recent years, with TSMC's capacity in high demand, Nvidia has monopolized a large portion of CoWoS advanced packaging capacity, and Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and others are actively抢占产能, and TSMC's annual price increases have further driven up manufacturing costs. Samsung has also cited geopolitical risks in the Taiwan Strait to persuade clients to diversify their orders.

For MediaTek, supply chain industry players point out that potential entry points for Samsung have quietly emerged. After MediaTek secured Google's TPU orders, advanced packaging was handed over to Intel according to Google's strategy, providing Samsung with a new opportunity for cooperation. At the same time, there is a possibility of re-introducing MediaTek's high-end mobile chip and ASIC businesses into Samsung's foundry services. It is understood that by 2025, Samsung has completed adjustments in the TV chip supply chain, with MediaTek securing about 30% of the market share, and discussions are ongoing regarding other edge AI chip cooperation.

However, supply chain industry players generally believe that no matter how actively Samsung or Intel competes for orders, the high barrier to shaking TSMC's dominant position remains. The gap in yield rates, process stability, and large-scale mass production capabilities is difficult to bridge in the short term, and core AI chip customers are unlikely to significantly shift their orders in the foreseeable future.