Last updated: May 22nd, 2026 at 16:40 UTC+02:00
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Memory chips could be thrown in to sweeten the deal.
Reading time: 2 minutes
Abhijeet Mishra / SamMobile
Samsung's foundry division has a new spring in its step. It already has a $16.5 billion chipmaking deal with Tesla, and is enjoying interest from others like AMD for 2nm chip production.
A new report indicates that Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee has made a low-key trip to Taiwan with a high-level delegation to meet MediaTek and potentially pivot it away from TSMC.
The report claims that Lee arrived in Taiwan yesterday along with a high-level delegation. His schedule there also involved a meeting with Cai Lixing, MediaTek's CEO.
MediaTek has typically used TSMC for chip production, but it's not opposed to expanding the net. It already awarded a packaging contract to Intel for the inference variant of Google's 8th-gen TPU, while opting for TSMC's packaging services for the training-focused variant of the chip.
Samsung understandably sees an opportunity here. TSMC doesn't have enough 2nm spare capacity to go around, while Samsung has a lot more of it. It also has something that TSMC doesn't, a full suite of memory semiconductors.
It's claimed that Samsung may also offer MediaTek preferential access to memory chips for its upcoming Dimensity chipsets for mobile devices in a bid to sweeten the deal.
Memory chips are not just hard to come by these days but they're also very expensive. Samsung is in a unique position to offer this incentive, and it just might be enough to sway MediaTek.
Adnan Farooqui is a long-term writer at SamMobile. Based in Pakistan, his interests include technology, finance, Swiss watches and Formula 1. His tendency to write long posts betrays his inclination to being a man of few words.
