Samsung Strikes Deal with Workers for Profit Sharing in Company's Trillion Dollar Slice of the AI Pie

Samsung Electronics Executive Vice President Yeo Myung-gu, left, and Samsung Electronics labor unions leader Choi Seung-ho sign a wage agreement – credit, Samsung, released

Following eye-watering Q1 performance, some 48,000 of Samsung’s semiconductor division workers are set to receive a new profit-sharing-style bonus structure that will give a bigger slice of the AI pie to those making baking it.

Samsung’s compensation package was among the country’s most generous, as the tech giant accounts for a staggering 16% of national GDP. But after last month’s Q1 revenues rose over 800%, exceeding the entirety of fiscal year 2025, 40% of Samsung’s South Korea-based staff were poised to go on strike for better terms.

The issue was resolved quickly and a preliminary agreement was reached between Samsung’s largest labor union and the company which saw the staff return to work Monday morning, and the company’s shares surge 7%.

Roughly 75% of the 62,000 unionized workers backed the preliminary deal that would see an end to the cap on bonuses of 50% of annual pay, and in its place the commitment to allocate 10.5% of operating profits from its semiconductor division to worker bonuses.

Well, the semiconductor division accounted for 94% of total operating profit in the quarter, amounting to $35.8 billion, 10.5% of which divided 48,000 striking workers would equate to around $78,000 for just this quarter alone. Multiplied by 4, a worker’s slice of the AI boom would amount to $312,000.

Samsung is the country’s largest company at over $1 trillion in market cap, and it’s also the largest semiconductor manufacturer. The standoff came 8 months after the second-largest semiconductor producer, SK Hynix, improved its own bonus terms to its employees.

“The semiconductor industry is now facing a war to secure global talent,” Samsung’s union said in a statement last month. “SK Hynix has already revised its compensation structure to retain talent, while foreign companies are luring our engineers with exceptional offers.”

Samsung and SK Hynix are direct beneficiaries of the global AI boom (or bubble, as some might say), as the wafer-thin processors are needed to supply the computing power to run the AI tools which can be found all throughout our society from E-commerce to hospitals to the front lines of the war in Ukraine.

The strike threatened to so thoroughly derail global semiconductor production that the Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok made mention of it on Sunday.

“Any disruption to Samsung’s semiconductor production would go far beyond losses for a single corporate group, leaving deep scars across the national economy,” said the Prime Minister, whose government actually helped step in and mediate the deal.“The agreement came later than expected,” Samsung said in a Wednesday statement. “We will work to build a more mature and constructive labor management relationship so that such a situation does not happen again.” Samsung Strikes Deal with Workers for Profit Sharing in Company's Trillion Dollar Slice of the AI Pie

Read More........ → May 29, 2026

Telstra and Ericsson team up to target 6G

Posted by Harry Baldock | News: The agreement spans various aspects of 6G research, including trips to both parties’ research centres

Telstra and Ericsson have signed a letter of intent to collaborate on 6G research.

The agreement will see the companies collaborate on the research, standards development, and real-world testing of 6G technology,

It also includes mutual site visitations, with Telstra engineers visiting Ericsson’s testbed in Sweden, and Ericsson staff travelling to Telstra’s Innovation Centre on the Gold Coast.

Further details on the partnership were sparse, but both partners emphasised the role AI had to play in making 6G networks more intelligent and more customisable for customers. This feature is, in fact, a key element of Telstra’s Connected Future 30 strategy, which aims to allow customers to purchase configurable connectivity services at individual prices.

“Mobile connectivity has been one of the most powerful economic engines of modern Australia. As the first G which is AI-native, 6G will be the most intelligent network yet – capable of advanced network connectivity, and new Network as a Product innovations such as the ability to sense the environment around the network. The latter opens the potential for new use cases for public safety, agriculture, weather detection and more,” said Shailin Sehgal, Telstra Group Executive of Global Networks & Technology.

“We are on a clear and exciting trajectory – from 5G Standalone today, to AI-powered 5G and autonomous networks, towards AI-native 6G that is meeting the evolving and future business needs,” added Erik Ekudden, Ericsson Chief Technology Officer. “6G will redefine what a network fundamentally is – not just an AI-native technology platform, but a platform that senses, adapts and orchestrates resources to deliver outcomes for enterprises and society at scale; simply an intelligent fabric.”

This type of partnership is largely to be expected, with Ericsson having been Telstra’s primary RAN partner for many years. The companies made similar agreements during the early days of the 5G era, though these were often based around delivering greater speeds.Today, Ericsson and Telstra’s focus has increasingly shifted away from pure speeds and towards the benefits of AI integration and network optimisation. It seems likely that their initial joint research on 6G will follow that same path. Telstra and Ericsson team up to target 6G - Total Telecom

Read More........ → May 28, 2026