SEMICON West 2026, North America's premier annual semiconductor exhibition, officially opened on Oct. 13 (local time) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The event kicked off on a celebratory note as the global semiconductor sector surpassed the historic $1 trillion annual revenue milestone—reaching the benchmark four full years ahead of original industry projections.
Opening the ceremony, Joe Stockunas, President of SEMI Americas, officially proclaimed the early achievement of the $1 trillion mark and proposed a celebratory toast. “For a massive sector that first crossed $400 billion in global revenue in 2019 to nearly quadruple in just seven years—based on year-end 2026 forecasts—is unprecedented in modern industrial history,” said Stockunas, highlighting the strong business momentum on the show floor. “The exhibition is entirely sold out, and we anticipate welcoming between 35,000 and 40,000 attendees over the next three days.”
Keynote speaker Ajit Manocha, President and CEO of SEMI, voiced strong conviction regarding the industry's explosive expansion. “When I took office in 2017 and laid out a roadmap on this very stage to hit $1 trillion by 2030, many regarded it as overly ambitious, yet all our conservative estimates missed the mark,” Manocha noted, sharply raising the industry's long-term outlook. “Having already crossed $1 trillion, the market is now positioned to reach between $2 trillion and $3 trillion by 2035.”
Reflecting on the market dynamics, Manocha added: “In my 46 years in this business, I have never witnessed a golden era quite like this, and we are only at the beginning. The confluence of three transformative forces—artificial intelligence, the IoT, and quantum computing—is driving this momentum.”
He cautioned, however, that rapid growth comes alongside compounding structural headwinds. “While 102 new fabrication plants (fabs) are scheduled to come online by 2029 and hyperscale data center buildouts accelerate, the geopolitical and macroeconomic landscape is growing increasingly fragmented amid energy constraints, skilled labor shortages, and trade barriers,” Manocha emphasized. “No single enterprise or sovereign nation can resolve these bottlenecks alone. Navigating this landscape requires operational resilience and unprecedented cross-border collaboration among industry leaders.”
Spanning three and a half days, SEMICON West 2026 features more than 60 technical sessions and over 500 expert speakers. The conference is slated to provide in-depth analysis on high-priority strategic topics, including the implementation roadmap of the U.S. Department of Commerce's CHIPS Act, advanced packaging architectures, AI-driven chip design automation, and next-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM) roadmaps.
