SEMI: 300mm fab equipment spending to reach $227B by 2029
SEMI released a new forecast at SEMICON West 2026 projecting global 300mm front-end fab equipment spending of $149 billion this year, up 31% year over year, rising to $227 billion by 2029 with double-digit annual growth in between. The group said 26 new 12-inch fab or line projects start construction in 2026 (one source says 20 excluding pure R&D fabs), versus 18 in 2027, while facilities starting operations or first wafers go from 13 this year to 23 next year. Construction spending grows 23% to $47.5 billion this year and reaches $63.3 billion and $68.4 billion in the following two years; Americas equipment spending is expected to more than double from $18.1 billion in 2026 to $40.6 billion in 2029, covering advanced logic and foundry capacity from Intel, TSMC and Samsung plus Micron's DRAM and Texas Instruments' analog and embedded expansion. SEMI senior director Clark Tseng said AI demand is translating into real fab investment, with advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration growing more important.
Fab equipment and construction spending are a leading indicator of AI compute capacity, showing AI demand moving from chip orders into actual manufacturing capacity.