SEMI CEO predicts upward trajectory for current chip cycle

Ajit Manocha, President and CEO of SEMI (Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International), is making a bold call: this chip cycle doesn’t follow the old rules. The numbers backing his confidence Global semiconductor revenues hit $368 billion in Q2 2026, a 35% jump from the prior quarter and a 104% gain year-over-year. Forecasts for full-year 2026 growth range from 90% to 112%, with some projections putting the total market near $1.6 trillion by year end. AI-driven memory growth at major suppliers has been running at 50% to 76% quarter-over-quarter as of Q2 2026, with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sitting at the center of that demand surge. HBM is essentially the plumbing that lets AI chips process enormous datasets at speed. Without it, frontier AI models don’t run. With it, every major hyperscaler on Earth is spending aggressively to secure supply. Over 100 new fabrication plants are currently under construction or in planning stages worldwide. Building a leading-edge fab costs tens of billions of dollars and takes years to complete. Why this cycle feels different Manocha’s argument is that several structural forces are now dampening the amplitude of those swings. First, hypersc...