IN Brief:
- Global semiconductor-equipment sales are forecast to reach $165.9bn in 2026 and $229.5bn in 2028.
- Wafer-fab equipment, test systems, and packaging machinery are all expected to set records.
- AI accelerators, HBM, leading-edge logic, and heterogeneous packaging are widening the investment cycle.
SEMI expects global semiconductor manufacturing-equipment sales to reach $165.9bn in 2026 and rise to $229.5bn by 2028 as AI-related investment spreads across wafer fabrication, memory, test, assembly, and advanced packaging.
The 2026 forecast represents annual growth of 23.2% from equipment sales of $134.7bn in 2025. Continued expansion is expected to lift the market to $201.2bn in 2027 before a fifth consecutive annual record is set the following year.
Wafer-fab equipment remains the largest segment, with sales covering wafer processing, mask and reticle equipment, and fab infrastructure forecast to increase 23.1% to $143.9bn in 2026. Further growth of 21.8% in 2027 and 14.1% in 2028 would take the segment to $200bn.
Foundry and logic equipment sales are projected to rise 18.9% to $78bn during 2026. Leading-edge capacity for AI accelerators, high-performance computing, and premium processors is driving much of that expenditure, alongside preparations for volume manufacture using 2nm gate-all-around transistor processes.
Memory investment is increasing more rapidly, with DRAM equipment sales expected to rise 39% to $38.8bn in 2026 and reach $56.9bn by 2028. High-bandwidth memory and advanced-node migration are leading the cycle, while NAND equipment spending is forecast to grow 30.7% to $13.9bn this year and reach $20.8bn in 2028 as manufacturers increase layer counts and density.
Back-end equipment is also entering a stronger phase. Test-equipment sales are expected to increase 31% to $15.3bn in 2026, while assembly and packaging machinery rises 9.6% to $6.7bn; by 2028, those segments are forecast to reach $20.8bn and $8.6bn respectively.
The figures show capital expenditure extending beyond the advanced wafer-processing tools most closely associated with AI processors. Large accelerators require stacks of HBM, silicon interposers, chiplet assembly, complex substrates, thermal interfaces, and extensive electrical testing, so investment has to follow the device through a longer and more exacting manufacturing chain.
Memory-fab investment had already been projected to exceed $50bn in 2026, driven by HBM, DDR5, advanced-node DRAM, and higher-layer NAND. The latest figures place that expansion within a broader equipment cycle in which leading-edge logic and back-end complexity are rising together.
Advanced packaging changes the economics of manufacturing because several known-good dies may be combined in one high-value assembly. A defect in an interconnect, substrate, memory stack, or finished package can discard components that have already passed through costly wafer fabrication, increasing the value of inspection and test before and after assembly.
HBM adds further yield pressure as multiple DRAM dies are thinned, connected through through-silicon vias, stacked, and joined to logic through high-density packaging. Mechanical stress, thermal behaviour, electrical continuity, contamination, and bonding quality all become part of the memory-manufacturing problem rather than concerns confined to final assembly.
Demand consequently reaches equipment suppliers well beyond lithography and deposition. Metrology, wafer handling, bonding, singulation, inspection, thermal processing, probe systems, sockets, and reliability equipment all become potential constraints when advanced devices must be produced repeatedly rather than demonstrated in small numbers.
The front-end portion of the cycle is visible in ASML’s stronger 2026 outlook, which reflects rising demand for advanced lithography across logic and memory. SEMI’s forecast indicates that comparable pressure is moving through the remaining production stages, where packaging and test capacity must expand in step with wafer output.
China, Taiwan, and Korea are expected to remain the three largest destinations for equipment spending through 2028. Taiwan’s expenditure is closely tied to advanced foundry capacity, Korea’s to memory, and China’s to a broad manufacturing expansion that is expected to moderate after several years of elevated investment.
Regional subsidies in Europe, the United States, Japan, and elsewhere will add strategic and specialist capacity, although the leading Asian manufacturing regions retain supplier density, production experience, and established ecosystems that cannot be reproduced by construction spending alone.
Semiconductor capital cycles remain exposed to memory pricing, utilisation, export controls, customer concentration, and changes in AI deployment. Even so, the breadth of the current forecast shows chip complexity multiplying manufacturing steps as well as transistor counts, pushing expenditure towards memory, test, and packaging alongside the conventional wafer fab.
