SK Hynix has posted a larger annual profit than Samsung for the first time, according to a CNBC report, ending Samsung's long-standing lead in the rivalry between South Korea's two memory giants.

The reversal marks the first time SK Hynix has out-earned its bigger domestic competitor on an annual basis. CNBC attributes the shift to artificial intelligence demand reshaping the memory market and, with it, the balance of power between the two firms.

Why does AI change the ranking?

AI workloads place a premium on high-bandwidth memory, the chips that feed data to AI accelerators. SK Hynix built an early lead in supplying this segment to AI developers, while Samsung trailed in qualifying its competing products.

That gap in product mix translated directly into earnings. As AI infrastructure spending rose through the reporting year, SK Hynix captured a disproportionate share of the profit pool in memory. Samsung, which still leads in broader chip and electronics businesses, could not offset the difference.

CNBC frames the result as evidence that AI is reshaping the rivalry between the two companies rather than producing a one-off anomaly.

What does this mean for Samsung?

The report positions the profit crossover as a milestone in Samsung's memory business, long the world's largest by revenue. Losing the annual profit comparison to SK Hynix signals that leadership in AI-grade memory, not overall capacity, now determines earnings power in the sector.

For SK Hynix, the result validates its concentration on high-bandwidth memory as a strategic bet. For Samsung, it raises pressure to close the qualification gap with AI customers in the coming cycles.

Both companies continue to compete across the full memory range, and Samsung retains its scale advantage elsewhere in its portfolio.

Market takeaway

The ranking of Korea's two chipmakers by profit has flipped for the first time, and AI demand did the flipping.