The Equipment Market Is Heading for a Record $165.9 Billion
SEMI expects 23.2% growth in 2026 on AI-driven demand for advanced logic, HBM and advanced packaging.
SEMI’s forecast, reported on 13 November 2026, puts global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales at $165.9 billion in 2026, up 23.2% year on year and a record, driven by AI-related investment in advanced process nodes, memory including high-bandwidth memory, and advanced packaging. The figure gives an industry-level footing to the bullish guidance issued days earlier by Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA, and it corrects a narrative that had begun to treat the equipment cycle as topping out. The commercial read is that the buildout is still expanding at the tool layer even while sentiment at the equity layer swings: fabs are ordering equipment on multi-year plans, which is why the capex curve and the stock chart can diverge for a quarter without either being wrong.