Samsung plans to build a $1.5 billion chip testing plant in Vietnam, according to a document seen by Reuters, in what would be one of the largest single semiconductor-related investments the Korean electronics giant has committed to its Southeast Asian manufacturing base.

The planned facility would handle chip testing — the back-end stage of semiconductor production where finished wafers are cut, packaged and screened for defects before shipment to customers. Reuters reported the plan exclusively, citing the internal document. Samsung has not publicly confirmed the investment, and the company did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the disclosure.

A $1.5 billion commitment places the project firmly in the tier of significant back-end investments now reshaping the Asian semiconductor supply chain. Testing and packaging, long treated as the low-margin tail of the chip value chain, have attracted renewed capital as advanced packaging becomes a bottleneck for AI and high-performance computing products. Samsung's move signals that the company intends to deepen its presence in this segment rather than cede it to specialized OSAT players such as ASE Technology and Amkor.

Vietnam is the logical landing spot. Samsung is already the country's largest foreign investor, with cumulative commitments exceeding $22 billion across its phone and electronics assembly complexes in Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen provinces, north of Hanoi. Those plants ship a substantial share of Samsung's global smartphone output. Adding a chip testing operation would extend the company's Vietnamese footprint from final device assembly into semiconductor back-end processing — a step up the value chain that Hanoi has courted for years through tax incentives and industrial park development.

The investment also fits a broader pattern of electronics multinationals diversifying production beyond China amid tariff exposure and Washington–Beijing trade friction. Vietnam has captured a disproportionate share of that reallocation, and Samsung has been among its earliest and largest beneficiaries. A chip test facility would deepen that position and give Samsung a back-end hub outside both Korea and China.

Details in the document — including the site, construction timeline, capacity and headcount — were not disclosed in the Reuters report, and Samsung's board approval process for the project could not be independently verified. Plans of this scale typically move through internal review before final capital commitments, which means the $1.5 billion figure represents a proposed investment rather than a sanctioned budget line.

For Vietnam, the project would advance a national ambition that has so far produced modest results. Intel operates a large assembly and test plant in Ho Chi Minh City, and Amkor began building a $1.6 billion packaging facility near Hanoi in 2023, but the country still lacks front-end wafer fabrication. A Samsung testing plant would add a second anchor tenant to the back-end cluster and strengthen the case for suppliers of substrates, lead frames and test equipment to localize.

The disclosure comes as Samsung's semiconductor division works to recover from a bruising memory downturn and close the gap with SK Hynix in high-bandwidth memory supply to AI accelerator customers. Back-end capacity — where HBM stacking and testing are performed — has been a constraint in that race, which adds a plausible strategic rationale for expanding test infrastructure even outside Korea.

If the plan proceeds to approval and construction, Vietnam would move closer to becoming a full back-end hub for one of the world's three largest memory makers, and Samsung would gain cost-advantaged testing capacity positioned to serve both its component business and its vast Vietnamese device assembly operations.