Lee family
Lee Byung-chul founded Samsung Sanghoe (Samsung Trading Co.) on March 1, 1938, in Daegu, Korea, with about 30,000 won in capital, exporting dried fish, produce, and noodles to China.
How the fortune was built
After the Korean War, Lee expanded into sugar refining, textiles, insurance, and securities before entering electronics in 1969 with the founding of Samsung Electronics. His son Lee Kun-hee, who took control in 1987 and drove the famous 1993 'New Management' quality overhaul, made memory chips the group's core profit engine, growing Samsung into one of the world's largest conglomerates spanning semiconductors, smartphones, displays, and shipbuilding. Lee Kun-hee died in 2020; his estate was valued at roughly $23 billion.
Where the family invests today
The family paid a record inheritance tax exceeding $10.7 billion starting in 2021 — one of the largest in history — alongside donating roughly 23,000 artworks to state museums. In late 2025 Lee Kun-hee's widow and daughters sold about $1.1 billion of Samsung Electronics shares specifically to help cover remaining inheritance-tax obligations. Lee Jae-yong, the third generation, became Samsung Electronics chairman in 2022; current capital deployment is corporate rather than a discrete family investment arm — heavy spending on memory-chip fabs, a foundry push to court AI customers, and new 2026 investments spanning semiconductors, robotics, and batteries.
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