The global semiconductor market delivered a strong performance in 2025, with the total worldwide revenue reaching $793 billion in 2025, an increase of 21 per cent year-over-year (YoY), according to preliminary results from Gartner.
At the core of this momentum is AI-related hardware, including processors, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and networking components designed for data centres and AI.
Gartner analysts noted that AI semiconductors accounted for nearly one-third of total sales in 2025, and are poised to become the dominant segment of the market by the end of this decade.
“AI semiconductors, including processors, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and networking components, continued to drive unprecedented growth in the semiconductor market, accounting for nearly one-third of total sales in 2025,” said Rajeev Rajput, Sr. Principal Analyst at Gartner. “This domination is set to rise as AI infrastructure spending is forecast to surpass $1.3 trillion in 2026.”
Market Leaders and Their Ranking
NVIDIA consolidated its leadership position, becoming the first semiconductor company to exceed $100 billion in annual chip revenue, and contributing to more than 35 percent of the overall industry’s growth in 2025. This performance reflects surging demand for GPUs and custom AI accelerators powering generative AI workloads, cloud services and enterprise applications.
Samsung Electronics maintained second place, supported by strong memory-chip sales, particularly in DRAM and HBM. Samsung’s non-memory business experienced a modest decline.
SK Hynix advanced to third place with a significant year-over-year increase in revenue, largely driven by HBM for AI infrastructure.
Intel saw its market share shrink, indicative of competitive pressures from companies that have strategically optimized products for AI and data-centric applications.
Drivers of Growth: AI, Data Centres, and Memory
Industry observers situate the semiconductor revenue surge within the context of explosive AI infrastructure investment. As organisations deploy generative AI models and scale training and inference workloads, demand for high-performance chips has eclipsed traditional growth drivers such as consumer electronics and personal computing. Analysts estimate that semiconductor revenue tied directly to AI processors exceeded $200 billion in 2025 alone.
Memory chips, especially HBM, have also seen strong growth. As data-intensive AI systems require large and fast memory pools to maintain throughput and efficiency. This contrasts with more conventional memory segments, where pricing pressures and inventory dynamics remain uneven. Nevertheless, memory growth contributed meaningfully to the overall revenue expansion.
The 21 percent growth rate recorded by Gartner underscores how AI and data-centric computing are fundamentally reshaping market demand patterns. Vendors and investors alike are realigning portfolios to prioritise solutions that support advanced analytics, machine learning, and cloud-native workloads.
Also Read: U.S. Invests $8.9 Billion in Intel: A Bold Move to Reinvent Semiconductor Supremacy
