Overview
- Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong made a low-key trip to Taiwan to meet MediaTek’s chief executive, a visit reported by multiple outlets as taking place on May 21.
- Reports say Samsung offered incentives that include guaranteed priority access to its memory chips and available 2nm foundry capacity to win MediaTek business.
- Neither Samsung nor MediaTek has confirmed a deal, and outlets describe the outreach as a strategic pitch with an uncertain outcome.
- Industry context favors Samsung’s move because heavy AI-driven demand has tightened TSMC’s advanced-node capacity while Samsung can pair logic fabrication with large-scale memory supply.
- MediaTek has already shown signs of supplier diversification, such as awarding advanced packaging work to Intel, and Samsung has used memory incentives before when courting big clients like Qualcomm.