{"slug": "semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028", "title": "SEMI Forecasts Record Chip Equipment Sales in 2028", "summary": "SEMI forecasts worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will reach $165.9 billion in 2026, up 23.2% from 2025, and a record $229.5 billion in 2028, driven by AI-related investment in leading-edge logic, HBM memory, testing and advanced packaging. The industry group published the mid-year forecast on July 14, noting that equipment spending is an upstream capacity signal rather than a direct measure of finished-chip output.", "body_md": "# SEMI Forecasts Record Chip Equipment Sales in 2028\n\nSEMI's July 14 mid-year forecast puts worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales at $165.9 billion in 2026, up 23.2%, and a record $229.5 billion in 2028. The industry group ties the growth to AI-driven investment in leading-edge logic, HBM-related memory, testing and advanced packaging, but the forecast tracks equipment spending rather than when more accelerators will reach users.\n\n### AI demand is moving upstream\n\nSEMI forecasts that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will reach **$165.9 billion in 2026**, up **23.2%** from 2025, and continue rising to a record **$229.5 billion in 2028**. The industry group published the mid-year forecast on July 14 and attributed the stronger trajectory to investment in AI infrastructure, leading-edge logic, advanced memory, testing and packaging.\n\nThe forecast is evidence that the AI buildout is reaching far beyond accelerator designers and cloud operators. It is pulling capital into the tools used to make, assemble and test the chips behind those systems. Still, these are projected equipment sales, not a direct measure of finished-chip output or deployable compute capacity.\n\n### Memory, fabrication and testing lead the increase\n\nWafer-fab equipment accounted for **$116.9 billion** in sales in 2025. SEMI expects that segment to grow 23.1% to **$143.9 billion in 2026**, then reach about **$200 billion in 2028**. It links the revised outlook to leading-edge logic and advanced-memory spending, including equipment for high-bandwidth-memory-related DRAM.\n\nThe application-level forecast shows how concentrated the expansion is. DRAM equipment sales are projected to rise 39.0% to **$38.8 billion in 2026** and reach **$56.9 billion in 2028**. Semiconductor test equipment is forecast to grow 31.0% to **$15.3 billion in 2026**, after a 55.3% increase in 2025. Assembly and packaging equipment is projected at **$6.7 billion in 2026** and **$8.6 billion in 2028**.\n\nKorea Times reporting based on the SEMI forecast also highlights China, Taiwan and Korea as the three largest equipment-investment markets through 2028. Hyperframe Research interprets the mix as a concentrated cycle led by advanced logic, HBM DRAM, testing and packaging rather than a broad expansion across older semiconductor capacity.\n\n### What the forecast does and does not signal\n\nFor AI infrastructure teams, the numbers point to investment in several known supply-chain constraints at once: leading-edge wafers, high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging and more demanding chip testing. That matters because a shortage in any one of those stages can limit how quickly complete accelerator systems are delivered.\n\nThe timing remains important. Equipment must be installed and qualified before wafers can be produced, packaged, tested and integrated into systems. SEMI's forecast therefore supports a multi-year capacity expansion story, not a promise that cloud or enterprise buyers will see an equivalent near-term increase in available AI compute.\n\n## Key Points\n\n- 1SEMI forecasts $165.9 billion in worldwide semiconductor equipment sales in 2026 and a record $229.5 billion in 2028.\n- 2Projected growth is concentrated in leading-edge logic, HBM-related DRAM, testing and advanced packaging rather than evenly spread across chipmaking.\n- 3Equipment spending is an upstream capacity signal, not a direct forecast of when finished AI accelerators will become available.\n\n## Scoring Rationale\n\nSEMI's multi-year forecast is a meaningful upstream signal for AI hardware capacity, especially in HBM, leading-edge logic, testing and packaging. It is an industry outlook rather than a new product launch or commissioned capacity milestone, and the underlying forecast was issued one week before this article was published.\n\n## Sources\n\nPrimary source and supporting public references used for this report.\n\nPractice with real Ad Tech data\n\n90 SQL & Python problems · 15 industry datasets\n\n[Active Search Campaigns by BudgetEasy](/problems/sql/active-search-campaigns-by-budget)\n\n[High CPC Clicks & Poor Landing PagesMedium](/problems/sql/high-cpc-clicks-poor-landing-page)\n\n[Campaign ROAS by Attribution ModelHard](/problems/sql/campaign-roas-by-attribution-model)\n\n250 free problems · No credit card\n\n[See all Ad Tech problems](/problems/datasets/adtech)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028", "canonical_source": "https://letsdatascience.com/news/semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028-a4ebdb35", "published_at": "2026-07-21 02:32:03+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-23 21:27:54.690097+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-chips"], "entities": ["SEMI", "Korea Times", "Hyperframe Research"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/semi-forecasts-record-chip-equipment-sales-in-2028.jsonld"}}