The days when packaging was a back-end chore are over. It now sets how much performance an AI system can deliver, and the market around it is scaling fast. Yole Group expects high-end performance packaging revenue to clear $51B by 2031, a 27 percent compound annual growth rate measured from 2025.
Unit growth is outpacing dollar growth: package shipments are expanding at a 33 percent CAGR and wafer demand at 30 percent, which points to packages that are both more numerous and physically larger.
Pressure from AI GPU and ASIC designs as they approach the reticle ceiling keeps the CoWoS-L mold interposer in first place among 2.5D formats, growing at a 28.1 percent CAGR. Two new formats, CoPoS and CoWoP, are expected to appear between 2028 and 2029.
Supplier concentration is extreme. Across Samsung, Micron, SK hynix, YMTC, TSMC and Intel, roughly 97 percent of 2025 revenue landed with those six companies.
Telecom and infrastructure carries the demand, growing past $36B by 2031 and accounting for 70 percent of the total, powered by appetite for AI accelerator packages, HBM integration and co-packaged optics engines.
In relative terms, automotive leads all end markets with a 36 percent CAGR as ADAS modules shift to 2.5D and 3D formats. By application, wafer-to-wafer hybrid bonding for 3D NAND is the biggest revenue segment today, expanding at 22.2 percent.
