Top 10 semiconductor trends expected in 2026

StartUs Insights has published its findings on: What are the Top 10 Semiconductor Technology Trends in 2026 and Beyond? 

These are as follows:

AI Compute and Custom Silicon: Cloud and enterprise spend keeps tilting to accelerators and in-house chips as power and supply become the limiting factors. NVIDIA’s data-center revenue hit USD 39.1B in fiscal Q1’26, +73% YoY.

Chiplets, 3D IC, and Advanced Packaging: CoWoS/SoIC capacity is expanding aggressively – industry trackers expect ~75k wafers per month of CoWoS in 2025 and further ramps tied to Blackwell-class GPUs.

High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and Memory-centric Architectures: HBM is the scarce currency of AI. TrendForce says HBM already represents 20% of DRAM revenue and will exceed 10% of bits in 2025.

Automotive Chips: S&P Global expects USD 2000+ silicon content per vehicle by mid-decade. Regulators are mandating safety stacks (EU GSR II in force for new models, US AEB standard phased by Sept 2029).

2nm race and Angstrom-class roadmaps: TSMC reiterates N2 HVM in late-2025 and A16 (1.6 nm) in H2’26 with backside power (SPR) to lift voltage droop and routing. Intel’s 18A (RibbonFET + PowerVia) targets 2025 with 25% performance or 36% power gains from the previous generation.

Supply chain geopolitics and re-shoring: The US has mobilized at an unprecedented scale – about USD 30.6 billion was awarded across 19 firms -- TSMC, Intel, Samsung each getting >USD 6 billion). Also, semiconductor announcements (while only 5% of reshoring events) drove USD 102.6 billion in capex, which is two-thirds of all FDI.

Photonic and Quantum integration: NVIDIA’s Spectrum-X Photonics targets 100-400 Tb/s switch throughput with silicon photonics, and industry trackers see CPO high-volume from 2027.

Edge AI and Domain-specific Processors: Microsoft’s Copilot+ baseline is pushing AI PCs and workstations. AI-capable PCs to be ~57% of shipments in 2026, while Counterpoint forecasts >400M GenAI smartphones in 2025.

Wide-Bandgap Power: SiC and GaN have crossed from niche to core power architectures across EVs, fast charging, renewables, and data centers. Momentum is visible on both demand and supply: Navitas reported USD 450M in GaN design wins with 50% YoY revenue growth in 2024.

Sustainability: The sector’s footprint is already vast, and a single large fab can demand ~1.59M ft³/day of water, generate >5000 tons of waste, and consume >100 000 MWh of energy. Water is the tightest choke point: fabs may need up to 5M gallons/day of ultrapure water (UPW) by 2035; TSMC used 101M m³ in 2023.

New technology for semiconductors?
Researchers at imec and Ghent University have achieved a breakthrough by successfully stacking 120 alternating layers of silicon (Si) and silicon-germanium (SiGe) on a 300 mm wafer using precise epitaxial deposition techniques. This 3D-stacked DRAM architecture with higher memory density will enable high-performance memory solutions, Gate-All-Around (GAAFET) transistors, and AI and quantum-optimized stacked logic.

TSMC remains the world’s foremost chip manufacturer, especially dominant in cutting-edge process nodes like 5 nm and below. In parallel, Nvidia has surged ahead as the most valuable player in the sector – its market capitalization recently surpassed USD 4 trillion amid the growing demand for AI-optimized GPUs.

ASML stands alone as the exclusive global supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems, while SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics remain dominant in the memory domain.

-- R. Adarsh, StartUs Insights.