GlobalWafers Corp (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, is preparing for new capacity expansion in the US as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications remains robust and customer requests for local supply increase.
The company sees rising demand for silicon wafers this year, as the AI boom boosts industry interest in advanced chips and chip packaging technologies, GlobalWafers said yesterday.
Additionally, customer inventories are improving significantly, stimulating higher demand for silicon wafers than last year, it said.
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times
Overall, GlobalWafers expects this year to be another growth year for the silicon wafer segment, albeit uneven growth, as some areas would pick up faster than others, GlobalWafers chairperson Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said at a media gathering in Hsinchu, comparing it to a similar scenario seen in the last super cycle in 2019.
“We are seeing faster growth in the advanced chip and chip packaging areas this time around,” she said.
In the US, GlobalWafers’ customers have been closely monitoring the company’s new capacity buildup, and are pushing the company to step up product qualification and ramp up production, as they have a high regard for enhancing local supply chain resilience, Hsu said.
GlobalWafers counts Apple Inc, Micron Technology Inc and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) among its customers with operations in the US.
GlobalWafers supplied a small volume of silicon wafers from its Texas plant after the first-phase production line was completed last year, but some customers have inquired about when the company would begin the second phase of capacity expansion, as the phase-one capacity could not sufficiently satisfy their demand, Hsu said.
The Texas facility has ample room for capacity expansion to six phases, she said.
“Every customer is requesting to increase [capacity],” Hsu said. “We have hired designers to work on this.”
The company is expected to make a decision in the second half of this year if an increase in output is justified, she said.
The second-phase project would add new capacity similar to the first phase’s, she added.
In addition to the Texas facility, the company is also expanding capacity at a smaller plant in Missouri to supply float-zone silicon wafers, which are increasingly used as the foundation for AI accelerators and quantum computing devices.
Riding on robust demand for advanced 12-inch silicon wafers to make AI chips and memory chips, GlobalWafers’ revenue this year is expected to resume growth, although not at a rapid rate, Hsu said.
A surge in memory demand helps the company raise wafer prices, she said.
Revenue should grow every quarter this year, meaning the first quarter would be the lowest of this year, Hsu said.
Gross margin would hold steady compared with last year, she said.
Last year, GlobalWafers’ revenue fell 3.24 percent to NT$60.6 billion (US$1.92 billion) from NT$62.63 billion in 2024.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS