Samsung SDS saw both revenue and operating profit rise in the second quarter on growth in its cloud and logistics businesses. The company also laid out a strategy to sustain cloud momentum this year, expand its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure to 800 megawatts (MW) by 2031, and deepen collaboration with global AI corporations to ramp up its AI full-stack business in earnest.
Samsung SDS said on the 30th that second-quarter consolidation revenue came to 3.7178 trillion won, with operating profit at 231.8 billion won. Revenue rose 5.9% and operating profit 0.7% from a year earlier.
Cloud and logistics drove the improved results. Revenue from the IT services business was 1.7625 trillion won, up 5.0% on-year, with cloud revenue at 779.4 billion won, up 17%. In particular, external cloud revenue surged 75% as the company won new customers across industries including finance, public sector, and shipbuilding. Logistics revenue also rose 6.6% to 1.9553 trillion won on growth in air forwarding, contract logistics, and external business centered on its digital logistics platform.
The company's strategy is to nurture an AI full-stack business—spanning AI infrastructure, AI transformation (AX) and AI services, and AI platforms and solutions—as a future growth pillar. Lee June-hee, the Samsung SDS chief executive, said at the second-quarter earnings conference call held that day, "We see the market environment of ongoing AI infrastructure supply shortages as an important growth opportunity," adding, "We will push ahead with concrete growth strategies and business models for the AI infrastructure business to preempt future growth opportunities as an AI full-stack corporations."
Samsung SDS recently became the first domestic corporations to sign a strategic partnership with Anthropic and is also expanding cooperation with frontier global AI corporations such as OpenAI and Google. Lee said, "We plan to jointly identify new cloud-based businesses and co-train AI engineers to strengthen service competitiveness," adding, "Through a 'Client Zero' strategy for employees and Samsung affiliates, we are first validating Anthropic services, and will later expand services to external customers."
The outlook for the second half was also positive. Kim Tae-ho, executive vice president in charge of management support at Samsung SDS, said, "IT services revenue is expected to grow at a high single-digit (7–9%) level in the second half on cloud growth, with full-year revenue growth also at a mid single-digit (4–6%) level," adding, "With revenue increases centered on the public and financial sectors and improved profitability, we expect the IT services operating margin to recover to last year's 12%."
He added, "We will expand GPU as a service (GPUaaS) through projects such as the Ministry of Science and ICT graphics processing unit (GPU) program and continue growth through AX projects for financial and public customers and the adoption of global AI services by Samsung affiliates," noting, "The logistics business is also expected to maintain last year's revenue and operating margin levels thanks to peak-season effects such as Black Friday and expansion of external business, but geopolitical risks in the Middle East remain an uncertainty."
Samsung SDS is also accelerating the expansion of its AI infrastructure business. Starting with the West Building of the Dongtan data center this year, it will sequentially bring online the Korea AI Computing Center in 2028 and the Gumi AI data center in 2029, and it plans to expand data center design, build, operate (DBO) projects. Through three business models—capital expenditure (CAPEX), equity investment (Equity), and corporations-customized DBO—the company aims to expand AI infrastructure from the current 110 MW to 230 MW in 2029 and more than 800 MW in 2031. Kim Eun-young, vice president of the Cloud Services Division, said, "The 800 MW target includes CAPEX and DBO, as well as a variety of global partnerships."
AI computing infrastructure is also being strengthened. Samsung SDS became the first among domestic cloud service providers (CSPs) to launch Nvidia B300 services, with more than 90% of the initial investment volume already deployed to customer services. In the second half, the company will secure additional B300s and the next-generation GPU "Vera Rubin" through the government GPU project, and it plans to enhance AI infrastructure competitiveness by applying FuriosaAI's Neural Processing Unit (NPU) "RNGD" to the Samsung Cloud Platform (SCP) to leverage GPUs and NPUs together.
The AX business is also expanding. The company won Woori Bank's AI agent banking and The Export-Import Bank of Korea's Generative AI build-out, and secured data platform projects at three of the four major domestic commercial banks. Lee emphasized, "Based on our experience building AI agents and data platforms, we will expand into large-scale AX projects, including in finance," adding, "Through strategic investment and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), we will secure mid- to long-term growth engines as an AI full-stack corporations."