Samsung Billionaires Are South Korea’s Top Four Richest As The Company’s Market Cap Blows Past $1 Trillion

Four members of the Lee family that controls Samsung are now South Korea’s richest people, marking the first time that the country’s top four billionaires all come from the same family. Shares of Samsung Electronics have soared 40% in the past month as demand for memory chips needed for artificial intelligence surges.

According to the “Forbes” real-time billionaire rankings, Lee Jae-yong, South Korea’s richest man and executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, now has a net worth of US$34 billion, an increase of US$12.4 billion from the net worth of South Korea’s 50 richest people finalized at the end of March. His sisters, Bo Jin ($12.4 billion) and Seohyun ($12 billion), and mother, Hong Na Hee ($11.2 billion), become the country’s second, third and fourth richest people respectively. Boo-jin is the president and CEO of the Shilla Hotel, one of Seoul’s top lodging and conference centers; Seo-hyun is the president of strategic planning at Samsung C&T, Samsung Group’s de facto holding company; and Ms. Hong served as director of the Leeum and Ho-Am Art Museum before resigning in 2017.

Much of the Lee family’s wealth comes from shares in Samsung Electronics, which has soared fivefold in the past year. The company is the largest maker of memory chips needed for artificial intelligence by sales. Its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is used to power artificial intelligence chips from Nvidia, AMD and Alphabet. Demand for Samsung Electronics’ commodity memory chips is also strong. For example, its NAND flash memory for long-term storage in solid-state drives is deployed in data centers to store the massive data sets required for artificial intelligence.

Last week, Samsung Electronics’ market value exceeded US$1 trillion, becoming the second Asian company to join the four-comma club after Taiwanese chip manufacturing giant TSMC. Last month, the company reported record quarterly revenue and profit, driven by its chip unit. First-quarter revenue increased 69% year-on-year to 133.9 trillion won, and operating profit increased 756% to 57.2 trillion won.

Barclays analysts said in a recent report that they expect Samsung to triple its HBM revenue this year. They added: “The demand/supply imbalance does not show any signs of improving in the near term, and with the memory content in data center architectures increasing significantly in 2027, we believe that accelerated capacity coming online is unlikely to materially close the gap this year or next.”

Jay Y.’s late father, Lee Kun-hee, died in 2020 at age 78, leaving his family with one of the largest estate tax bills in the country’s history. Kun-hee’s father, Byung-chull, founded Samsung in 1938 as a trading company that quickly transformed into a vast empire with interests in food, textiles and electronics.

More from Forbes

ForbesMemory chip boom makes South Korean semiconductor equipment maker founder a billionairego through john conForbesAI chip boom propels South Korean circuit board maker’s chairman to billionaire statusgo through john conForbesAI data center boom creates South Korea’s newest billionairego through john con