Samsung spent $25.55 billion on R&D last year

A large part of this money was spent on research and development of HBM and high-capacity DDR5 memory chips.

Samsung is one of the biggest spenders on research and development (R&D) in the technology industry. The South Korean firm spent KRW 37.7 trillion (around $25.55 billion) on R&D in 2025, which is 7.8% higher than what it spent in 2024. This shows that the company is increasing its research spending every year.

A large portion of that R&D spending was used to keep up with booming demand for semiconductor memory chips, including high-capacity DDR memory and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. Companies such as AMD, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia are buying most of the memory chips available in the market to power their AI data centers, hyperscale infrastructure, and server farms.

Samsung also spent KRW 52.7 trillion (around $35.7 billion) on facility investments in 2025. That is $3.39 billion more than what it spent in 2024. The money was used to upgrade its semiconductor manufacturing facilities, including the NRD-K complex, a semiconductor R&D hub located at the Giheung campus in Yongin, South Korea.

The company says it will continue investing more money in the development of future HBM chips this year. It shipped the first batch of HBM4 chips last month and is expected to ship more HBM4 chips to Nvidia going forward.

Asif Iqbal Shaik - Senior Editor

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First Samsung device: T100

Asif is a computer engineer turned technology journalist. He has been using Samsung phones since 2004, and his current smartphone is the Galaxy S23 Ultra. He loves headphones, mechanical keyboards, and PC hardware. When not writing about technology, he likes watching crime and science fiction movies and TV shows.

Business DRAM HBM R&D Samsung Device Solutions Samsung Electronics Samsung Memory Samsung Research