Worldwide semiconductor revenue surged 21% year-on-year to reach $793 billion in 2025, driven overwhelmingly by demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, according to preliminary estimates released by Gartner.
AI-focused semiconductors—including processors, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and networking components—accounted for nearly one-third of total global chip sales last year, underscoring a structural shift in the industry. Gartner forecasts that this momentum will intensify, with global AI infrastructure spending expected to exceed $1.3 trillion in 2026.
“AI semiconductors continued to drive unprecedented growth in the semiconductor market,” said Rajeev Rajput, Senior Principal Analyst at Gartner. “This dominance is set to rise sharply as AI adoption accelerates across data centers, cloud platforms, and enterprise workloads.”
The impact of AI demand was reflected clearly in vendor rankings. NVIDIA further consolidated its position as the world’s largest semiconductor company, extending its revenue lead over Samsung Electronics by $53 billion. NVIDIA became the first chipmaker to surpass $100 billion in annual semiconductor sales, generating $125.7 billion in revenue in 2025—an increase of nearly 64% year-on-year—and accounting for more than 35% of total industry growth.
Samsung Electronics retained its second-place ranking with $72.5 billion in revenue. Growth was primarily driven by memory products, which rose 13%, while non-memory semiconductor revenue declined 8%, highlighting uneven demand across its portfolio.
SK Hynix emerged as one of the fastest-growing vendors, climbing to the third position with $60.6 billion in revenue, up 37% year-on-year. The surge was fueled by strong demand for HBM used in AI servers, reinforcing the strategic importance of advanced memory technologies.
Intel, once the dominant force in semiconductors, continued to lose ground. The company fell to fourth place, ending 2025 with a 6% market share—half of its share in 2021—amid intensifying competition and a slower recovery in its core businesses.
Memory suppliers and fabless chipmakers also posted strong gains. Micron Technology recorded a 50% increase in revenue, while AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and MediaTek benefited from AI, networking, and high-performance computing demand.
Gartner estimates that HBM accounted for 23% of the DRAM market in 2025, surpassing $30 billion in sales, while AI processors alone generated more than $200 billion in revenue. By 2029, AI semiconductors are expected to represent over half of total global semiconductor sales, signaling a fundamental reordering of the industry’s growth drivers.
As AI infrastructure scales rapidly, the semiconductor market appears increasingly defined by a smaller set of technology leaders capable of delivering high-performance, AI-optimized silicon at scale.
