Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 26: Nvidia’s Groq chip ramp is bringing Samsung Foundry closer to profitability as the American semiconductor company begins mass production of its Groq 3 LPX inference accelerator, with Samsung Electronics manufacturing the critical processors, according to a report by The Korea Herald.
The development has raised market expectations that the South Korean technology giant’s loss-making contract manufacturing unit could stage a financial turnaround as early as this year.
Nvidia announced at the Hot Chips 2026 conference in California that the Groq 3 LPX had entered full-scale production, marking the company’s push beyond graphics processing units into an integrated computing stack covering training, inference, systems and software.
The accelerator is a rack-scale system containing 256 language processing units tailored for artificial intelligence inference. The hardware operates alongside Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform, allowing graphics processing units to handle training workloads while Groq silicon manages inference tasks for AI agents.
“Inference is the growth engine of AI,” the report quoted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as saying. “Vera Rubin extends that vision for the era of agentic AI, with LPX enabling ultrafast token generation and another leap in AI throughput, efficiency and responsiveness.”
Samsung is the exclusive manufacturer of the Groq 3 LPX processors, using its 4-nanometer fabrication line. The contract provides the company with substantial advanced-node production volume as it attempts to reverse operational losses.
Huang previously confirmed at the GTC conference in March that Samsung was fabricating the hardware and that Nvidia was expanding output “as fast as we possibly can.”
The production surge has fueled forecasts of an operational rebound for Samsung during the second half of the year.
“Samsung Foundry is expected to enter a meaningful inflection point in the third quarter,” the report quoted Kim Dong-won, head of research at KB Securities, as saying.
“Excluding costs such as provisions for performance bonuses, a return to profitability is expected for the first time in four years since 2022, supported by the recent 15% price increase and the ramp-up of 4-nanometer LPU production,” Kim said.
Samsung has widened business ties with key global firms, including Tesla, Apple, Google, Broadcom and Anthropic. With market leader TSMC facing tight manufacturing capacity, Samsung has positioned itself to secure contracts from enterprises seeking alternative advanced-node supply.
The expansion comes as major cloud providers develop proprietary chips. Amazon has deployed its Trainium silicon, while Google prepared to offer its tensor processing units externally this year.
Nvidia countered these shifts last December by acquiring Groq’s intellectual property and hiring its core engineering team in a $20 billion agreement.
Nvidia also committed approximately $7 billion to AI startup Poolside to integrate more than 100 researchers for its upcoming Nemotron 4 model ahead of its fiscal second-quarter financial results. (ANI)
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