BofA lifts chip market view

Bank of America raised its chip-market forecast to $1.3 trillion for 2026, betting artificial intelligence spending is remaking the industry. (finance.yahoo.com) Analyst Vivek Arya lifted the bank’s 2026 estimate by $300 billion from the forecast it published four months earlier. He now sees the semiconductor market topping $2 trillion by 2030, which implies about 20% annual growth through the end of the decade. (finance.yahoo.com) Arya said artificial intelligence and data-center spending would drive most of the gains through computing, networking, and memory chips. He also said industrial demand is improving as customers rebuild inventories and add robotics. (finance.yahoo.com) The call comes after a record 2025 for the industry. World Semiconductor Trade Statistics said global chip sales rose 26.2% to $795.6 billion in 2025, with fourth-quarter revenue up 38.4% from a year earlier. (wsts.org) That 2025 growth was concentrated in the parts of the market tied to artificial intelligence servers. World Semiconductor Trade Statistics said the computer segment grew more than 60% in 2025, while logic and memory chips led product growth because of demand for data centers, artificial-intelligence accelerators, and high-bandwidth memory. (wsts.org) A semiconductor is the tiny switch inside electronics that stores data or performs calculations. The more powerful the chip, the more design work it takes before a factory ever makes it, which is why Bank of America said rising “logic intensity” should lift demand for electronic design automation software and design services. (finance.yahoo.com) (investing.com) Bank of America pointed to Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys as beneficiaries of that design bottleneck, alongside chipmakers such as Nvidia, Broadcom, Marvell, and Advanced Micro Devices and equipment suppliers including Applied Materials and Lam Research. (finance.yahoo.com) (investing.com) The bank’s forecast is also more aggressive than many industry baselines. McKinsey wrote in January that most estimates put the market at $1 trillion to $1.1 trillion by 2030, though its own broader methodology produced a higher $1.6 trillion central estimate. (mckinsey.com) Bank of America’s note still drew a line between the artificial-intelligence boom and the rest of the market. Arya said consumer categories such as smartphones and personal computers remain weak, and he modeled 43% year-over-year growth in compute and storage against a 9% decline in wireless communications. (finance.yahoo.com) So the new forecast is not a call on every chip company at once. It is a bet that artificial-intelligence servers, memory, networking, and the software used to design advanced chips will keep pulling the semiconductor market higher from its $795.6 billion 2025 base. (wsts.org) (finance.yahoo.com)