Chip‑equipment sales hit record

Chipmakers and their suppliers spent a record $135.1 billion on manufacturing equipment in 2025, up 15% from 2024. (semi.org) That money went into the machines that etch, deposit, package and test chips before they reach phones, servers or cars. Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, the industry trade group known as SEMI, said front-end wafer-processing sales rose 12% and other front-end segments rose 13% in 2025. (semi.org) Back-end spending climbed faster. Test-equipment billings jumped 55% and assembly-and-packaging equipment sales rose 21% as artificial-intelligence chips and high-bandwidth memory required more checks and more advanced packaging. (semi.org) The spending map stayed heavily concentrated in Asia. China, Taiwan and South Korea accounted for 79% of the global market in 2025, up from 74% in 2024, according to SEMI. (semi.org) China remained the largest single market at $49.3 billion, essentially flat from 2024. Taiwan rose 90% to a record $31.5 billion and passed South Korea, which increased 26% to $25.8 billion; Japan grew 22% to $9.5 billion, while North America fell 20% to $10.9 billion and Europe dropped 41% to $2.9 billion. (seaj.or.jp) The split shows where the current chip buildout is happening. Taiwan’s increase tracked investment in advanced logic foundries, while South Korea’s growth reflected spending on dynamic random-access memory and high-bandwidth memory used with artificial-intelligence accelerators. (semi.org) Equipment sales are one of the clearest readings on future chip supply because fabs buy tools months or years before finished chips ship in volume. SEMI said on April 1 that worldwide 300-millimeter fab-equipment spending is expected to rise again to $133 billion in 2026 and $151 billion in 2027. (semi.org) That leaves the industry entering 2026 with spending still strongest at the top end of the stack: the factories, packaging lines and test floors needed to build the next wave of logic and memory chips. (semi.org)