Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to surge 92% in 2026 as AI infrastructure investment and soaring memory demand reshape the global market.
Worldwide semiconductor revenue is expected to reach US$1.6 trillion in 2026, up 92% from US$809 billion in 2025, according to Gartner.
The business and technology insights firm forecasts revenue will rise further to US$1.9 trillion in 2027, with investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure and rapidly expanding memory demand driving growth.
“The semiconductor industry is entering a fundamentally new growth phase,” said Ben Lee, Principal Analyst, Gartner. “The industry’s pace of expansion is accelerating dramatically, driven by continued investment in AI infrastructure and a stronger-than-anticipated memory price cycle.
“As AI infrastructure scales, it is not only reshaping investments across the semiconductor ecosystem but also redefining the industry’s application mix. The AI data center ecosystem is expected to grow from 36.5% of semiconductor revenue in 2026 to more than 53% by 2030, evidencing a structural shift in where the value of semiconductors is generated and how demand is evolving across the industry.”
Memory is expected to account for 54% of total semiconductor revenue in 2026, compared with 27% in 2025. Memory revenue is forecast to reach US$837 billion this year and exceed US$1 trillion in 2027.
Revenue from Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) is expected to increase by 246.6% in 2026, while NAND flash memory revenue is forecast to rise 371.9%.
Additional capacity is expected to enter the market in 2027 but supply and demand conditions are projected to remain constrained as AI infrastructure deployments increase memory consumption.
“AI infrastructure has fundamentally changed the dynamics of the memory market,” said Shrish Pant, Principal Analyst, Gartner. “While price expansion is accelerating growth in 2026, continued AI infrastructure deployments, higher memory footprint per AI server and sustained demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) will all contribute to memory revenue growth through 2027 and beyond.”
The impact of AI is also extending beyond memory. As AI clusters become larger, faster and more energy-intensive, they require greater investment in CPUs, networking chips, power management, analog devices and optical interconnect technologies.
“AI is broadening the opportunity for semiconductors across the entire infrastructure layer, rather than benefiting a single category of devices,” Lee said. “Excluding memory, Gartner forecasts semiconductor revenue to grow from US$589 billion in 2025 to US$718 billion in 2026, an increase of 21.9%, and reach US$864 billion in 2027.”
