Global silicon wafer shipments will grow 11.8 percent in 2026 to 14,420 million square inches, according to SEMI’s annual forecast, with records expected in each year through 2029 and a total of 17,034 million square inches by the end of that run.
The figures cover polished and epitaxial wafers sold by wafer manufacturers to chipmakers, excluding reclaimed material. They are the rawest measure available of how much silicon the industry actually intends to process.
Two product families are carrying the growth. Advanced epitaxial wafers go into leading edge logic, where each successive node demands tighter specifications on the starting substrate. Polished wafers go into memory, and that demand has widened well past high bandwidth memory into server DRAM and enterprise flash.
A recovering mature node picture helps as well. Utilisation at older fabs had been weak through the inventory correction, and that slack is being absorbed again.
The forecast matters because wafer supply is slow to add. Expanding a crystal pulling operation takes years and large capital commitments, and the industry has been cautious about building capacity for a boom it has seen turn before. If shipments do climb every year to 2029 as projected, the substrate layer stays tight for the whole period.
That has a knock-on effect on price. Bare wafers have already become a cost pressure on memory makers, and every increment in shipment volume is negotiated against a supply base that cannot move quickly. The forecast is a demand statement, but it also describes a squeeze.
