Updates share prices in paragraph 6, adds analyst comment in paragraph 7
By Hyunjoo Jin
March 17 (Reuters) - Shares of Samsung Electronics 005930.KS rose as much as 5% on Tuesday after Nvidia NVDA.O CEO Jensen Huang said the South Korean company was producing Nvidia's new artificial intelligence chips.
The news fuelled expectations that Samsung's foundry division, which makes logic chips for customers including Tesla TSLA.O , Apple AAPL.O and Samsung's phone division, may be able to turn around as early as next year after posting billions of dollars in annual losses in recent years, analysts said.
At Nvidia's GTC developer conference in California on Monday, Huang unveiled Nvidia's new AI inference processor based on technology from chip startup Groq.
"I want to thank Samsung who manufactures the Groq LP30 chip for us and they're cranking as hard as they can," he said, adding the chips were in production, and would be shipped in the second half of this year.
Samsung also showcased the Nvidia chips made using its 4-nanometer manufacturing process at the GTC.
Samsung shares were up 4.3% at 196,800 won as of 0252 GMT, after earlier reaching 198,000 won. The broader market .KS11 was up 2.7%.
Sohn In-joon, an analyst at Heungkuk Securities, expected Samsung's foundry business would be able to reach breakeven later next year. But he said weak demand from mobile phones stemming from surging memory chip prices could weigh on foundry earnings.
Advanced Micro Devices' AMD.O CEO Lisa Su will meet Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee in South Korea on Wednesday, media reports said, with eyes on whether the two would discuss cooperation in memory chips and logic semiconductors.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Kate Mayberry)
((hyunjoo.jin@thomsonreuters.com; 82-2-3704-5685; Reuters Messaging: hyunjoo.jin.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net/))