Wafer Demand Forecast – Q3 2025 Update - TechInsights

TechInsights' Q3 2025 wafer demand forecast update highlights a growing bifurcation in the semiconductor market, driven by robust growth in AI-related segments while other industries face headwinds fr... Read original →

The AI compute race is inducing structural imbalance in wafer allocation. HBM’s growing share—projected to surge from 16% to 21% of total DRAM wafer use—squeezes logic and consumer memory production while forcing premature EUV adoption even in mature nodes to manage large-die yield. Technically, coexistence of sub-3nm advanced packaging and LPDDR5X intensifies competition between foundries and IDMs for AR1 substrates. Geopolitically, U.S.-led export controls on lithography tools have raised EUV access costs for firms in Taiwan, China and mainland China, accelerating Samsung and SK Hynix’s U.S. fab investments. Strategically, Micron leverages HBM4 standardization to contain CXMT, while TSMC locks in NVIDIA and AMD via CoWoS-HBM bundling. Over the next 18 months, non-AI wafer pricing will remain under pressure, but HBM capacity will become the new ‘hard currency,’ triggering consolidation across equipment, materials, and OSAT sectors.