SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics said its third-quarter profit jumped from a year earlier, but the pace of recovery weakened from the prior quarter as it struggles to cash in on the AI boom that has benefited chip rivals like TSMC and SK Hynix.

The world's biggest maker of memory chips, smartphones and TVs posted on Thursday an operating profit of 9.2 trillion won in the July to September period, compared with 2.4 trillion won a year earlier and 10.4 trillion won the previous quarter.

The third-quarter result was slightly above Samsung's preliminary estimate of 9.1 trillion won flagged earlier this month, which was below market expectations at the time.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Jamie Freed)