By Adam Clark

Samsung Electronics said Thursday that it has become the first company to ship a new type of memory-chip crucial for artificial-intelligence processors. But Micron Technology is hot on its heels.

Samsung said it has begun mass production of a new generation of high-bandwidth memory, called HBM4, and had shipped commercial products to customers.

"This achievement marks a first in the industry, securing an early leadership position in the HBM4 market," Samsung said in a statement.

Micron is the chief rival of South Korea's Samsung and SK Hynix in making HBM chips, which are crucial for the latest AI chips from the likes of Nvidia. The three companies are racing to ship HBM4 as they compete for share in the lucrative market. Samsung anticipates that its HBM sales will more than triple in 2026 compared with 2025.

However, there shouldn't be too much alarm for Micron. The American company's CFO Mark Murphy said at an industry conference on Wednesday that it was carrying out volume production and commercial shipments of its HBM4 products this quarter.

Micron shares rose 9.9% on the back of the comments on Wednesday and gained a further 1.4% in after-hours trading.

Demand for memory products is so high across the AI chip market that Wall Street analysts generally estimate that Micron can sustain the 20%-25% market share in the HBM market it took last year.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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February 12, 2026 03:54 ET (08:54 GMT)

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