When SEMICON West gathered in San Francisco in 2023, the semiconductor industry was forecasting a path to $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. Three years later, the industry has already blown past that number. SEMICON West 2026 returned to San Francisco with a sold-out exhibit floor, more than 30,000 attendees, and an industry confronting a different question: How does it keep up with the growth it once aimed for?
SEMI’s own projections show how steep that curve has become. In his opening keynote, SEMI President and CEO Ajit Manocha forecast a market of more than $2 trillion by 2030, and potentially $3 trillion by 2035. At the SEMI Market Symposium, the association projected 300mm fab equipment spending of $149 billion this year, rising to $227 billion by 2029, with construction beginning on 20 new 300mm fabs or production lines in 2026 alone.
AI infrastructure is driving much of that growth, but electrification, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and industrial automation are adding semiconductor content, as well. What makes the current expansion unusual is the growing complexity of the systems those chips will enable, not the almost insatiable demand for chips.
“We’ve started talking about how to re-engineer engineering because you need to co-design and optimize across multiple intersections,” said Sassine Ghazi, president and CEO of Synopsys .
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