Global semiconductor industry likely to cross $2 trillion by 2035: SEMI

The 1st International Electronics, Packaging, Design, and Manufacturing Conference 2026 was held today in Faridabad, under the mentorship of IEEE Electronics Packaging Society.

Delivering the opening keynote, Ajit Manocha, President, SEMI, said the semiconductor industry is going through a major inflection point. AI is now fueling growth opportunities. SEMI brings together $3 trillion electronics value chain. Top priorities for 2026 are global advocacy and SIPS, workforce development, sustainability, PFAs, AI and cyber security. 

SEMI tech partners include Fraunhofer, CEA-Leti, IEEE, IESA, ITRI, AIST, etc. SEMI is built on three pillars. Standards, Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS), and Thought Leadership. Semicon West started in 1970 to share our forward-looking vision.

Today, we have all research institutions as partners of SEMI. All the important institutions of the world are present at any SEMI event. We are now seeing exponential growth. It was earlier known as a cyclical industry. We have now seen three waves. First, IoT, next, AI, and third, quantum. There are also unprecedented number of geopolitical issues. Every day, we are hearing something new. They are creating lot of impact our lives.

SEMI is now helping governments to overcome geopolitical issues. We support only companies that are compliant with the semiconductor industry standards. My simple message: do not confront with any country, keep your head low, and do your work. We should focus on things that we can control.

We are also having workforce development. Industry is growing exponentially. STEM education has gone down by factor of three in last decade. Number of children having couples has reduced by -1. The overall STEM education population has gone down by two.

SEMI is also focused on cyber security and AI. Global semiconductor industry revenue was $775 billion by 2025. It will now cross $1 trillion by 2026. We are predicting that it will further cross $2 trillion by 2035. GenAI is expected to add $6-$13 billion value to GDP by 2030.

AI is accelerating quantum, and quantum is accelerating AI today. AI also stands for accelerating innovation. We have artificial narrow intelligence (ANI), designed for specific tasks. There is artificial general intelligence (AGI), for general, human-like intelligence. We have artificial super intelligence (ASI), and are now working to reach the level of ASI by probably 15 years. We have been trained to think about the future. We feel this will happen inside five years. ASI is happening in five years. Humanoids will also become an integral part of our life in the future. They can also be the best companion for the elderly.

Advanced packaging and HI
Advanced packaging and heterogenous integration are now here. PM Narendra Modi had said that Moore’s Law will make the semiconductor industry grow every two years. Manocha later rolled out Modi’s Law of Exponential Growth. We have to now execute on that thought. We are currently in the heterogenous era. We were recently at Sanand, Gujarat, last week for the opening of Micron’s ATMP facility.

TSMC is now working on 10- and 14-Angstorm. We are now in the heterogenous era. Packaging is increasing the number of cores in chip. PPVC is power, performance, volume, and cost. HI platform was launched in the USA. HI is driven by various requirements and deliverables. These are: HPC, AI wave, integrated photonics to quantum computing, need for energy efficiency, consumer model driving compute on edge volume, medical / wearables, etc. The solution for the future is HI + AI.

AI and HI should also help with energy-efficient chips. There is big convergence on medical and wearables. Humans will also have a semiconductor chip inside you in the next five years, so that they can live longer. There are also emerging materials for HI. In compound semiconductors, there are GaN, SiC, InP, GaAs, Ga2O3 (ultra-wide bandgap. Optical and photonic materials include silicon photonics, lithium niobate, optical polymers, glass optical interposers. Thermal management has advanced TIMs, sintered silver, liquid metal interfaces, high-k ceramics, etc.

Advanced carbon and 2D materials include graphene, carbon, nanotubes, diamond heat spreaders, pyrolytic graphite, etc. Advanced substrates and interposers comprise glass core / glass panels, silicon interposers, advanced organic substrates, ceramics (AIN), etc. Interconnect and bonding materials include copper hybrid bonding, oxide bonding, dielectrics (low-k, ultra low-k), low temperature bonding metals, etc.

All of these materials need lot of research work. Silicon photonics also needs lot of work. SEMI is driving advanced packaging HI (APHI). Semicon India followed the law of exponential growth last year. Momentum is plenty in India. It will see high growth in the future.