[Digital Today reporter Dae-geon Seok] Samsung Electro-Mechanics said on Thursday it signed a contract with a major global company to supply multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC), a component that stably supplies power to semiconductors, for AI servers. The contract is worth 879.3 billion won.

Supply will begin on Dec. 21, 2026 and continue for 1 year through Dec. 21, 2027. Based on disclosure filings, it is the second-largest MLCC long-term supply contract disclosed this year. It is also Samsung Electro-Mechanics' eighth long-term supply contract disclosed this year.

Since May, the company has consecutively signed contracts covering key components including silicon capacitors, MLCC for AI servers and inductors. It also included FCBGA, a package substrate that connects high-performance semiconductors to a mainboard. Including this contract, its cumulative disclosed contract value this year reaches about 5.18 trillion won.

About 50 customers have either signed long-term supply contracts with Samsung Electro-Mechanics or are in talks over contracts. The company projected that more than half of its 2027 MLCC sales will come from long-term supply contracts. It explained that signing contracts based on customers' mid- to long-term demand helps stabilize its supply system while also supporting efforts to strengthen its business structure around high value-added products.

Demand for MLCC for AI servers is also increasing as the performance of graphics processing units (GPU), which handle AI computation, and application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), custom-designed semiconductors for specific uses, improves. As the number of dies, the semiconductor circuit units inside a chip, increases, power consumption rises. MLCC capacity also needs to increase to supply the additional power without interruption. Samsung Electro-Mechanics expects required capacity to roughly double each year.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics holds more than 40 percent of the AI server MLCC market. Goldman Sachs forecast the market will grow to $5.8 billion in 2030 from $1.4 billion in 2025. The compound annual growth rate is about 34 percent.

A Samsung Electro-Mechanics official said, "As the AI industry grows, demand for high-performance and high-reliability MLCC is expanding," and added, "Based on differentiated technological capabilities and stable supply capacity, we will continue to strengthen competitiveness in the AI server MLCC market."