Semiconductor race broadens
Investment in the semiconductor industrial stack is spreading beyond chip design into equipment, talent, packaging and national strategy. Global chip‑equipment sales hit a record in 2025 and governments like Japan are making multi‑billion dollar bets on domestic foundries, while Taiwan is funding IC‑design talent programs and new robotics hubs and firms are piloting advanced through‑glass‑via packaging lines for high‑end ICs (digitimes.com; greyjournal.net; digitimes.com; digitimes.com).
Chip companies are spending far beyond chip design now, pouring money into the tools, packaging and talent needed to keep artificial intelligence hardware moving. (semi.org) Global sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment rose 15% to a record $135.1 billion in 2025, up from $117.1 billion in 2024, according to SEMI’s industry data released April 7. SEMI said advanced logic, memory and artificial-intelligence capacity drove the increase. (semi.org) Japan is making one of the clearest state-backed bets. Rapidus said in March it secured 267.6 billion yen in government-backed funding and 167.6 billion yen from 32 private-sector companies, bringing its capital base and legal capital surplus to 274.95 billion yen. (rapidus.inc) Taiwan is widening the push from factories to people. Its 2026 IC Taiwan Grand Challenge pilot program says it will link chip design, manufacturing, packaging, testing and product development while using funding and local partnerships to attract global talent to Taiwan. (cbi.nstc.gov.tw) Taiwan’s cabinet had already framed that shift in its chip-based industrial innovation program, which called for upgrading teaching materials and research infrastructure so Taiwan could become a training base for integrated-circuit design talent. (english.ey.gov.tw) Packaging is getting the same attention because the bottleneck is no longer only making chips, but wiring many chips together fast enough for artificial-intelligence systems. DigiTimes reported Monday that TPK and ASE plan a pilot line in the third quarter of 2026 for through-glass-via packaging, which uses tiny vertical holes in glass substrates to connect high-end computing chips. (digitimes.com; semiengineering.com) Through-glass vias are one answer to the limits of older organic substrates. Semiconductor Engineering reported that glass substrates are being pursued because high-performance applications need tighter spacing and smaller interconnects than plated through-hole approaches can deliver. (semiengineering.com) The broader race now runs across the whole industrial stack: fabrication tools, foundry finance, packaging lines and workforce pipelines. The record equipment billings and the new public programs in Japan and Taiwan show governments and suppliers are treating semiconductors less like a single product and more like national infrastructure. (semi.org; rapidus.inc; cbi.nstc.gov.tw)
