Samsung Electronics has told its 8-inch foundry customers that it will stop running all of its 8-inch production lines by the end of 2030, Korean trade outlet TheElec reported on 2 November, citing the industry. TheElec said it is the first time Samsung has put an end date on the business; until now the company had said only that it would shrink its 8-inch lines in stages.
Samsung began mass production on its 180-nanometre process in 2000, according to TheElec. By our arithmetic, the end-2030 date closes a run of about 31 years since then.
The key insight: TheElec reported on 2 November that Samsung has told its 8-inch foundry customers all 8-inch lines will stop by the end of 2030, about 31 years after its first 180-nanometre mass production by our arithmetic.
Samsung plans to wind down the 8-inch business and concentrate people and equipment investment on finer processes built on 12-inch wafers, TheElec reported. The company has not taken new 8-inch product orders since the start of this year, the report said.
Earlier this year Samsung decided to close only one of its three 8-inch fabs in Giheung, S7, within the year and keep S6 and S8 running, according to the report. On the first-quarter earnings call in April, foundry executive vice president Kang Seok-chae said the 8-inch power chip, display driver chip and image sensor lines would be closed one after another, TheElec said.
The 8-inch lines run older processes at 65, 70, 90, 130 and 180 nanometres, according to TheElec. They make display driver chips, power management chips, microcontrollers and image sensors.
Samsung’s 8-inch foundry: process introductions (180nm in 2000, 130nm in 2002, 90nm in 2006, 70nm in 2011), no new 8-inch orders and the S7 closure in 2026, and all 8-inch lines to stop by end-2030, as reported by TheElec on 2 November 2026. The 31 years is our arithmetic.
The Customers Left to Move
TheElec named Imagis, ABOV Semiconductor, Dongwoon Anatech, Silicon Mitus and LX Semicon as Korean chip designers that use Samsung’s 8-inch foundry. They will need to move production to another foundry or find a substitute process before the shutdown, the report said.
The main Korean 8-inch foundries are DB HiTek and SK keyfoundry, but both have large volumes already allocated to existing customers, according to the report. One chip designer told TheElec that both are full and that extra volume would have to go to a foreign foundry.
Moving to 12-inch processes can raise manufacturing costs and requires redesign and requalification, TheElec reported, and analogue chips need special high-voltage processes that do not simply shrink. Taiwan has little spare 8-inch capacity, and using Chinese foundries can clash with end customers’ limits on Chinese-made chips, the report said.
Some designers are preparing to build inventory from Samsung output in advance, which costs extra money and storage, according to the report. Voices in the industry say the government should mediate to push back the closure date, TheElec reported, while another industry official said four years of notice made it hard to call the decision one-sided.
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Where Samsung Is Putting Its Effort
In a separate report the same day, TheElec said Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong visited the company’s Advanced Package Lab in Yokohama, Japan, on 1 November, his first on-site check since it officially opened on 8 September. Samsung is investing 40 billion yen (about 350 billion won) over five years from 2024 in the lab, according to the report.
The lab will develop next-generation process materials from wafer bonding to glass substrates and plans to extend its role to new packaging architectures for AI chips, TheElec reported. That is the bottleneck we mapped in the AI packaging bottleneck in numbers.
As we read the report, the date matters more than the decision: Samsung had already stopped taking new 8-inch orders this year and was closing S7, but a fixed end date starts a clock for every customer still on those lines.
As we read TheElec’s account, the squeeze lands on the customers rather than on Samsung: the report says the Korean alternatives, DB HiTek and SK keyfoundry, are already heavily allocated, Taiwan has little spare 8-inch room and Chinese foundries can clash with end customers’ sourcing limits.
An industry official, to TheElec (Korean original; in English: the domestic fabs are full, China is off-limits, and Taiwan and US fabs have no room either)
FOR KOREAN CHIP DESIGNERS TheElec named Imagis, ABOV Semiconductor, Dongwoon Anatech, Silicon Mitus and LX Semicon as Samsung 8-inch customers that must move production or find substitute processes.
FOR OTHER 8-INCH FOUNDRIES The report says DB HiTek and SK keyfoundry are the main Korean 8-inch foundries and already have large volumes allocated to existing customers.
FOR SAMSUNG’S FOUNDRY TheElec reported that Samsung will concentrate people and equipment investment on finer processes built on 12-inch wafers.
The framework’s foundries-and-packaging layer reads: “Allocation power at the foundry is now more consequential than chip design itself.”
As we read it, TheElec’s report shows that allocation power at the old end of the market too: Samsung decides when the 8-inch lines stop, and the designers on them have to find capacity elsewhere. The framework is the owner’s argument and does not discuss the 8-inch exit.
The 2030 date comes from TheElec’s reporting, citing the industry; the report does not quote a Samsung statement confirming it. TheElec does not give 8-inch wafer volumes, revenue from the business, or plans for the S6 and S8 buildings.
The report does not link the 8-inch exit to AI demand; it says Samsung will focus on 12-inch fine processes. The Yokohama lab report is a separate story, and TheElec does not connect the two.
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Samsung has told 8-inch foundry customers that all of its 8-inch lines will stop by the end of 2030, about 31 years after its first 180-nanometre mass production by our arithmetic, according to TheElec. Korean chip designers such as LX Semicon and Dongwoon Anatech now have to find room at DB HiTek, SK keyfoundry or abroad, where TheElec’s sources say capacity is tight.
A note on sourcing. This piece is based on two Korean-language TheElec reports of 2 November 2026, translated by us; the 8-inch exit plan is TheElec’s reporting citing the industry, not a Samsung statement. The 31-year figure is our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
