The global semiconductor industry is on track to achieve $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2026, a milestone arriving years earlier than previously forecasted due to explosive demand from artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, sales reached $791.7 billion in 2025 and are projected to surge 26% in 2026, driven by the insatiable need for AI hardware.
John Neuffer, CEO of the Semiconductor Industry Association, stated, "When we have growth in our sector, it means exponential benefits in other sectors. Our technology is foundational for pretty much every critical strategic industry." He noted the market was initially expected to take four more years to hit the $1 trillion mark, but AI has dramatically accelerated the timeline.
The boom is powered by massive investments in new data centers, which require vast quantities of logic and memory chips. Logic chip revenue soared to $301.9 billion in 2025, a 40% year-over-year increase, while memory chip revenue grew 35% to $223.1 billion. Neuffer emphasized that while the industry experiences its typical cycles, "the pie is just simply getting bigger."
Geographically, growth was widespread in 2025, with increases across Asia-Pacific, the Americas, Europe, and China, while Japan lagged. Concurrently, U.S. export restrictions on chips to China have begun to ease slightly.
The investment landscape reflects this shift, with Korean chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix—now collectively valued at $1.14 trillion—surpassing Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent (combined $1.07 trillion) for the first time. Samsung and SK Hynix stocks have risen more than 39% this year, buoyed by memory chip demand, while Alibaba and Tencent have faced declines amid policy concerns in China.
Yiping Liao of Franklin Templeton explained the divergence: "Korea is really concentrated on a specific part of the tech supply chain, whereas for China, it’s more a story of a full end-to-end AI stack that they’re trying to build." Timothy Moe from Goldman Sachs added that the chip sector will drive approximately 60% of all earnings growth in Korea this year.
Industry leaders confirm the sustained momentum. Simon Lin, Chairman of Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Wistron, asserted that the AI boom is real and will fuel strong growth through 2027. Wistron, a key supplier to Nvidia, expects significant growth in AI-related orders in 2026.
Wistron's new U.S. manufacturing plants are scheduled to begin production in the first half of 2026, supporting Nvidia's ambitious plan to manufacture up to $500 billion worth of AI servers in the U.S. over the next four years. This includes facilities in Dallas, Texas, developed in partnership with Wistron and Foxconn.
The production ramp coincides with Nvidia's transition to its next-generation "Rubin" platform, which entered mass production in January 2026. This platform, built for "agentic AI," uses a 3-nanometer process and is expected to ship in volume in the second half of the year. Further supporting this infrastructure build-out, the U.S. Department of Energy secured $1 billion to construct two new supercomputers using advanced AI hardware.
Jeff Lin, CEO of Wistron, noted that customer demand is evolving from solely training new AI models to requiring constant computing power for "inference" work—running AI applications. This shift necessitates the massive server infrastructure currently under construction, with orders stretching through 2027, indicating demand is rooted in real infrastructure needs rather than speculation.
