Samsung earmarks $9.15 billion for chip expansion, split between Vietnam and South Korea

Samsung’s semiconductor arm is gearing up for a massive cash infusion – roughly 12.26 trillion won, which works out to about $9.15 billion. Almost two‑thirds of that, close to 8 trillion won (around $5.99 bn), is headed for Vietnam, while the balance will beef up high‑value chip output in South Korea.

In the northern province of Thai Nguyen, Samsung plans to pour 105.79 trillion Vietnamese dong – about $4.09 bn – into a state‑of‑the‑art memory‑chip testing complex at Yen Binh Industrial Park. The first production line should start churning by the fourth quarter of 2027, with a second line slated for 2028. These plants will take care of the final quality checks for DRAM and NAND flash units that are packaged back at Samsung’s Cheonan fab in Korea.

It’s important to note that this move is about expanding testing capacity overseas, not about shifting wafer‑fabrication out of Korea. As Professor Joo Seung‑hwan of Inha University points out, Samsung wants to keep its most sophisticated, high‑bandwidth memory products – the kind that power AI accelerators – at its home‑grown sites in Cheonan and Onyang, while routing the more commodity‑type memory work to Vietnam.

Funding for the Vietnamese side is largely self‑sustaining: about 66.64 trillion dong (roughly $2.58 bn), or 63 % of the total Vietnamese outlay, will come from reinvested profits generated by Samsung’s local operations.

At the same time, Samsung Electro‑Mechanics is rolling out a separate 6.78 trillion‑won (≈$5.08 bn) programme to boost its flip‑chip ball‑grid‑array (BGA) substrate capacity. Of that, 4.27 trillion won will go to a new line in Sejong, South Korea, and 2.51 trillion won will be earmarked for a facility in Vietnam. These substrates are the connective tissue that links high‑performance processors to printed‑circuit boards – a demand that’s surging as AI servers need ever‑larger, more complex chip packages.

The Sejong plant is slated to start mass production in September 2028, focusing on the technically demanding, high‑margin products. The Vietnam expansion, meanwhile, aims for full operational status by June 2030, positioning the country to take on a growing slice of global orders.

Both projects enjoy backing from medium‑ to long‑term purchase commitments from worldwide customers, which should help cushion the upfront investment risk and lock in demand for the added capacity.

Nevertheless, industry insiders caution that simply adding factories abroad doesn’t automatically create a robust local semiconductor ecosystem. The real test will be how much of the material, equipment and ancillary services can be sourced from Vietnamese suppliers. Without that supply‑chain foundation, Vietnam’s role may stay limited to hosting extra production lines rather than becoming a full‑fledged chip hub.