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SEMI Group says that China will continue to lead in chipmaking investments in 2025.

SEMI Group says that China will continue to lead in chipmaking investments in 2025.

SEMI, an industry group, said that despite a decline of a large amount year-over-year, China would continue to be the largest investor in new computer chipmaking technology in 2025. Taiwan and Korea will follow, according to a report released on Wednesday.

SEMI's fabrication plant forecast said that global gear investments will increase 2% to $110 billion this year, marking the sixth consecutive year of growth due to investment made in tools required to produce chips for artificial intelligence.

SEMI said that the impact of AI is likely to be even greater in 2026 when investments are expected to increase by 18%.

China is the world's largest chip consumer. Firms there have been increasing their chipmaking capacity since years. But they started a massive sprint in 2023 and 2024, with the support of the government, in an effort to reduce dependence on imported chips, and as a response to the restrictions imposed by U.S. authorities.

ASML, which is the world's largest manufacturer of chip equipment, predicts sales in 2025 of between 32 and 38 billion euros. This implies a market share of over 25% for its dominant sub-sector of lithography.

Other leading equipment manufacturers include Applied Materials, KLA and LAM Research, while Chinese equipment makers like Naura, AMEC, and Huawei affiliate SiCarrier have been growing rapidly.

Chinese spending will fall by 24% to $38 billion, from $50 billion, in 2025. This is still more than the $21.5 billion spent in Korea where SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and other companies are increasing their capacity to produce memory chips.

The projected spending in Taiwan where the leading foundry TSMC produces AI chips for Nvidia, among others, is $21 billion.

SEMI reported that the Americas, Japan, and Europe are all expected to spend between $14 billion and $9 billion each in 2025. (Reporting and editing by Toby Sterling)

(source: Reuters)