BofA sees $1.38T semiconductor market

Bank of America now says global semiconductor revenue could reach $1.3 trillion in 2026, up from its own lower forecast just four months earlier. (finance.yahoo.com) The call came from Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya, who raised the firm’s 2026 target by $300 billion and said Nvidia and Broadcom remain central to the buildout. (finance.yahoo.com) Arya said artificial intelligence and data centers would drive most of the gains through compute, networking and memory, while industrial demand adds support through inventory replenishment and robotics. (finance.yahoo.com) A semiconductor market forecast is a bet on how many chips the world will buy and at what price. In 2026, the biggest lift is coming from data-center chips that train and run artificial intelligence models, plus the memory packed next to them. (finance.yahoo.com) (omdia.tech.informa.com) Omdia reinforced that view on April 23, saying its 2026 semiconductor revenue forecast now implies 62.7% growth as DRAM and NAND demand collides with tight supply. (omdia.tech.informa.com) The research firm said DRAM could nearly double in value in 2026, while NAND could quadruple from 2025 levels. It said the shift toward High Bandwidth Memory is worsening shortages in conventional memory chips. (omdia.tech.informa.com) High Bandwidth Memory, or HBM, is stacked memory placed close to an artificial intelligence processor so data moves faster and with less power. That design uses more advanced packaging and fewer standard memory parts, which can tighten supply elsewhere. (omdia.tech.informa.com) (fool.com) Bank of America’s note also pointed investors beyond the headline chip names to suppliers that sell the tools for this buildout, including Applied Materials, Lam Research, Cadence and Synopsys. (finance.yahoo.com) The bullish case is not spread evenly across the industry. Arya modeled 43% year-over-year growth in compute and storage, while wireless communications was projected to decline 9%. (finance.yahoo.com) Deloitte’s 2026 semiconductor outlook is lower than Bank of America’s, projecting annual sales of $975 billion in 2026, which shows how wide the range still is around the artificial intelligence boom. (deloitte.com) Even in the bullish forecasts, the constraint is not demand alone but whether suppliers can add enough memory, packaging and cloud capacity to keep up through 2026 and into 2027. (finance.yahoo.com) (omdia.tech.informa.com)