Samsung Electronics has hired Margaret Han, a former executive at TSMC and Intel, to lead its North American chip foundry operations.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Han joined the South Korean company in March, having previously served as vice president, global procurement at NXP Semiconductors.

Following a 21-year stint at TSMC, which ended in 2021, Han also briefly held the role of head of global external foundry sourcing and supplier management at Intel before joining NXP and then Samsung. She also served as president and director of the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association for seven years.

Despite posting record-breaking earnings results in recent quarters, Samsung has struggled to be competitive in the US semiconductor market, with the company’s Device Solutions (DS) unit unable to keep pace with SK Hynix or TSMC, its biggest competitors in the memory chip and contract chip manufacturing markets respectively.

In October 2024, co-CEO of Samsung Electronics' semiconductor business, Jun Young-hyun, penned a note to the company’s customers, investors, and employees in which he said Samsung has a history of “challenge, innovation, and overcoming” that will allow it to turn “the serious situation we are currently facing into an opportunity for a leap forward.”

Around that same time, it was reported that the company was planning to restructure its chip business, in part by cutting the number of executives working in DS, streamlining its foundry business, and reorganizing the Semiconductor Research Center, the hub responsible for the company’s development of chip technologies.

Samsung has also delayed construction at its fab in Taylor, Texas, to upgrade the foundry process at the facility from 4nm to 2nm and allow the company to better compete with TSMC.