Fab‑tool demand rises

Orders for the machines that make chips are rising again as artificial-intelligence spending pushes more factories to buy etch and deposition tools. (semi.org) SEMI said worldwide semiconductor equipment sales climbed 15% in 2025 to $135.1 billion, up from $117.1 billion in 2024. Wafer-processing equipment, the category that includes many etch and deposition systems, rose 12%. (semi.org) Etch tools carve patterns into a silicon wafer, and deposition tools lay down ultra-thin films, one layer at a time. Lam Research says those steps are getting heavier as chips move into taller 3D designs for NAND, dynamic random-access memory, logic and packaging. (lamresearch.com) Lam said on April 14 that deposition and etch intensity is expected to rise by roughly a factor of two as 3D structures spread across more chip types. The company pointed to high-bandwidth memory, which stacks dynamic random-access memory dies vertically for AI systems, as one example already in production. (lamresearch.com) That helps explain why investors keep watching Lam, whose core business is wafer-fab equipment and services. Lam says “nearly every advanced chip” is built with its technology, and the company is scheduled to report March-quarter results on April 22, 2026. (lamresearch.com) The spending wave is broader than one supplier. SEMI said test-equipment billings jumped 55% in 2025 and assembly-and-packaging equipment sales rose 21% as AI devices and high-bandwidth memory raised performance and packaging demands. (semi.org) ASML’s 2025 annual report shows the same buildout from another angle: the lithography supplier posted €32.7 billion in net sales in 2025 and shipped 535 systems. The company also highlighted a tool for “after-etch overlay control,” a sign that process steps around etch are becoming more important as chip features shrink. (asml.com) Applied Materials has also tied current demand to AI memory and U.S. manufacturing. Its investor site lists a Micron partnership on next-generation AI memory and a long-term research deal with SK hynix focused on AI memory innovation in Silicon Valley. (appliedmaterials.com) The constraint is no longer just buying a tool. TSMC’s Arizona hiring pages show active recruiting for “tool install” and equipment engineers, underscoring how labor and service capacity have become part of the factory bottleneck. (careers.tsmc.com) Intel’s Ohio project shows how long domestic fab schedules can stretch when timing slips. Intel said on February 28, 2025 that construction of its first Ohio fab is now expected to finish in 2030, with the second in 2031, as it phases spending with market demand. (intel.com) For chipmakers adding U.S. capacity, the issue is now twofold: securing the right tools and securing the people who can install, qualify and keep them running. As AI demand keeps pulling more steps into etch, deposition, packaging and test, that queue is getting longer. (semi.org)