AI is Reshaping the PCB Industry

Advanced substrates and high-layer-count boards, not smartphones and PCs, are now the growth engine.
by Dr. Hayao Nakahara

How things change in just one generation. If we look back 25 years or so, computers and networking systems were pushing technology and fabricator revenues, with smartphones showing signs of a coming shift. There were four billion-dollar printed circuit board fabricators, two each from the US and Japan.

Last year, however, some 29 fabricators cleared the $1 billion mark, and all but two, TTM and AT&S, were based in Asia.

The data point to a decisive shift in what’s driving PCB demand: after decades in which PCs, tablets and especially smartphones set the pace, growth is now concentrated in advanced IC package substrates and high-layer-count multilayer boards feeding AI hardware for hyperscalers like Google, Meta, AWS and Microsoft. Taiwan and China, home to the bulk of global chip packaging and assembly capacity, continue to widen their lead over Western and Japanese fabricators, several of which have been acquired or absorbed in recent years. Global PCB output will reach $135 billion in 2026, driven largely by continued investment in substrates – although ballooning capacity and looming materials and technology shifts could test the durability of the current boom.

Before diving into the data, the author must regretfully note that it is getting harder to put together NTI-100 data every year. Five years ago, he told himself it was the last time he’d write this article. Sadly, it’s an addiction. So, here we go.

Many individuals and trade organizations helped the author with the data in the main table. Special gratitude is due to CPCA, without which it would have been impossible to put this story together. As always, there are probably errors caused by the author’s judgment. He takes full responsibility for any errors. But in his defense, who can pull off such article? Ranking is important for many PCB fabricators to see where they stand. However, everything is relative.

Exchange Rates

Revenues are converted to US dollars using 2025 exchange rates based on local currency including 2024 revenues for the purpose of seeing the growth rate of each fabricator in the list (Table 1). In 2025, the RMB, baht and Euro gained slightly against the US dollar. As yen to dollar exchange rate is floating at about 160:1 throughout 2026, fewer Japanese entries will make next year’s list.

Rankings

The NTI-100 this year contains 168 entries. Tables 2 and 3 highlight the findings based on the 60 largest companies. Tables 4-7 contain the remaining 108 companies. Readers will see the purpose of doing this.

As shown in Table 2, the top 30 fabricators’ output accounts for 61.6% of the aggregate $101.8 billion by the 168 fabricators with revenues of $100 million or more in 2025.

The next 30 fabricators’ output accounts for 18.1% of the total. In other words, the top 60 fabricators’ output accounts for nearly 80% of the NTI-100. Seeing the two tables, one may conclude that the big get bigger and faster. A total of 29 fabricators had revenue exceeding $1 billion in 2025! TTM and AT&S were the only Western fabricators among them.

In the 1990s through 2020, semiconductors and PCBs used by PCs including tablets and smartphones were the growth locomotive. That has changed completely today. While the growth of these products is stagnant or even declining, AI-related semiconductors, GPUs, CPUs, HBMs, and PCBs assumed the role. Particularly over the past few years, the semiconductor narrative has centered on GPU, HBM, CoWoS, EMIB, and now CPU, advanced process nodes and high-speed interconnects. By the second half of 2026, however, the resource allocation triggered by AI is spreading well beyond the highest-end AI components and into conventional DRAM, PCs, smartphones and the broader electronics supply chain.

From the PCB viewpoint, advanced IC package substrates (hereafter “substrates”) and high-layer count (“HLC”) multilayer boards became the driving force. If one examines the PCB fabricators that grew by large percentage from 2024 to 2025, he will notice that they are either substrate fabricators and/or HLC multilayer board fabricators (MLB). Their biggest end-customers are typically so-called hyperscalers such as Google, Meta, AWS and Microsoft.

Taiwanese PCB fabricators have tremendous advantages as TSMC makes about 70% of the global chips and many OSATs are Taiwan-based. The CEOs of two large semiconductor companies, Nvidia and AMD, Jensen Huang and Dr. Lisa Su, respectively, both came to the US from Taiwan. The CEO of Intel is Lip-Bu Tan, of Chinese Malaysian origin. These may not have anything to do with the strength of Taiwanese and Chinese PCB fabricators, but the author sometimes wonders. Major OSAT companies, which assemble chips into packages, operate in Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia. ODM/EMS companies such as Foxconn, Pegatron and Wistron, to name a few, are Taiwan-based although they operate globally. This may relate somewhat to the strength of Taiwanese and Chinese PCB fabricators.

What top PCB fabricators have in common is that they invested tremendously in the right direction and ensure delivery confidence to their clients. In terms of importance to mega-users of PCBs, “price” comes first, followed by “delivery,” which means capacity or investment, technology notwithstanding. These relate to cost of manufacturing. Asia Pacific provides all of these.

Table 4 shows the remaining 106 fabricators with revenues of $100 million or more in 2025.

Summary of 2025 Top Fabricators

A total of 168 fabricators reported revenues of more than $100 million in 2025 (Table 5). Let’s look a little closer at that that entails. For example, the entire European production “in Europe” in 2025 is estimated at about $2 billion. A large portion of European PCB production is made by AT&S, mainly in China although its Malaysian production seems to rise continuously. AT&S sold its plant in South Korea to Italy-based Somacis. Likewise, a substantial portion of American PCBs are made in China by TTM.

It’s not shown here, but the total production of PCBs made in China in 2025 is estimated to be about $69.5 billion, of which Chinese “nationals” accounted for about $44 billion (there are more than 1,000 Chinese fabricators), with another $20 billion by Taiwanese companies, and $6 billion by other foreign transplants (TTM, AT&S. Mektec, Meiko, CMK, Gultech, ISU Petasys, and a dozen others). Dynamic, Palwon, Brain Power, etc., are Taiwanese fabricators but have no plants in Taiwan. Zhen Ding Technology has a Chinese subsidiary registered on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange called Avary Holdings. It has another subsidiary in China, LIST (Leading Interconnection Semiconductor Technology), specializing in substrates ($387 million revenue in 2025).

Unfortunately, several Chinese fabricators that should be in the NTI-100 are not accounted for because the author could not obtain their 2025 revenues. Assuming they output at least about the same amount as in 2024, the number of Chinese entries would have been about 95 and the output may have exceeded $39 billion. The author knows several South Korean fabricators whose output was also hard to obtain, so he used the same output as in 2024, but the total quantity is not large enough to influence the total output by top fabricators.

Bare Boards and Assembled PCBs

Separating the values of assembled PCB (by PCB fabricators) from the total output is problematic. In China, more than 700 PCB fabricators claim to be “one-stop-shops,” from design to fabrication and assembly and even box-build. Suppliers of flexible PCBs (FPC) to iPhone assemblers are said to assemble boards at their plants where the FPC is fabricated before shipment to the customer. Approximately 40% of the shipped FPCs are “bare boards.” The component value is 40% and the cost of assembly is 20%.

TTM, Compeq, SCC, Meiko and many other large PCB fabricators engage in assembly, and some engage in equipment businesses, too. The best estimate of this author is that about $10 billion of the estimated $115 billion PCB output made by about 2,500 fabricators worldwide – including the $20 billion made by 2,300 fabricators that are not in the NTI-100 – are assembled boards. If this estimate is decent, the author concludes that the “total global bare PCB output” in 2025 was about $104 billion. Remember, the 168 fabricators listed in Table 4 are merely 7% of the total 2,500. Many PCB reports are floating around. The author has no idea how they come up with their numbers and forecasts.

Comments on Certain Fabricators

Taiwan’s Unimicron purchased Ruwel Werke of Germany and Clover Electronics of Japan. Taiwan’s GBM, a subsidiary of HannStar Board, purchased the PCB segment of Elna Corp. of Japan several years ago. Then, in 2024, it purchased Lincstech (formerly a PCB arm of Hitachi Chemical, which is now the core of Resonac). Kyoden was sold to Carlyle Group Japan. Eastern Co. was bought by Simmtech of South Korea. FICT was purchased by MBK Partners of South Korea (a 20% share was purchased by one of FICT’s customers, FormFactor). FICT’s Vietnam subsidiary was acquired by Taiwan’s Tripod. The total revenue of these “former Japanese fabricators” is about $1.4 billion. That is, Japan lost $1.4 billion PCB revenue as a nation. Shinko Electric Industry remained a Japanese fabricator as a thanks to the Japanese government fund organization (which holds am 80% share, with 15% held by Dainippon Printing and 5% by Mitsui Chemical) for security reasons.

As mentioned, Somacis bought AT&S Korea. As a result, its revenue jumped on top of its exiting subsidiaries in the UK, US and China, which also grew in 2025. In 2026, its revenue will top $540 million because it acquired ACB Group in France and Belgium in early 2026. TTM bought ILFA in Germany and GS in Switzerland. Victory Giant Technology (VGT) bought APCB Thailand from its Taiwanese parent. VGT gutted the plant, rebuilt and is expanding. Many more such deals have taken place in recent years, particularly in China.

The author has more than 800 Chinese PCB fabricator files accumulated over the past 30 years. Many of their websites are very confusing. When a Chinese fabricator buys a fabricator in China, the original name of the purchased company seems to remain the same. Such practice is very confusing to researchers like this author.

A Chinese fabricator may have several plants. Its website shows pictures of equipment. It doesn’t say anything about which of the several plants the equipment belongs to.

A Quarter Century Later

Table 6 is modified from the original the author made in 2001. Compare Table 9 with Tables 2-4, which show the world top PCB fabricators in 2025. Some 13 of the top 30 fabricators in 2000 have disappeared, either completely or partially (through acquisition by others). TTM did a very good job in growing by acquisition. Acquisitions are not so easy because the buyer must shape the acquired organizations into a coherent corporate culture.

In 2000, eight of the top 30 were US-based companies. Today, only one: TTM. Twelve of 30 were Japan-based. Today, only four.

The following tables may be interesting to see. Table 7 shows production values by region/country whereas Table 8 shows the output by nationality. America includes North (the US, Canada and Mexico, the latter of which is very small) and South, mainly Brazil. ROW includes Middle East, Africa and Russia estimates.

Expectations for 2026

Looking at the available statistics, the global 2026 PCB output may reach $135 billion.

Semiconductor chips must be “packaged,” and packages must be “mounted” on PCBs to implement final products. So, there is a strong correlation between chips and PCBs. For many years, for every $1 semiconductor output, the PCB output has been around $0.15, or, 15%. The 2025 semiconductor output was about $800 billion, thus 15% (for PCB) equals $120 billion. In 2026, WSTC expects that the semiconductor output may be $1.5 trillion. Using the 15% rule, the 2026 PCB output would be $225 billion.

However, this assumption gets carried away, probably. The major growth of semiconductor output this year is coming from memory devices. Since memory prices are shooting up, the “15%” assumption no longer stands correct. The author could see, however, that the 2026 global PCB output may reach $135 billion as mentioned.

In 2026 through 2027, PCB output growth will be driven by advanced substrates and HLC MLBs. About $30 billion has been invested in advanced substrates since 2022 by major players such as Unimicron, Kinsus, Nanya PCB, LIST, Ibiden, Shinko Electric, Toppan, SEMCO, LG Innotek, AT&S, SCC, Fast Print, ACCESS and a few more fabricators. Due to the scarcity of materials such as T-glass, essential for high-speed, low-loss signal transmission in systems which are made with PCBs carrying substrates and other components, certain substrates and PCBs are on allocation, boosting selling prices, despite the author’s earlier comments on price. Many analysts claim that the current boom will last, but some cynics believe that overcapacity is imminent. The question is, when?

An Investment Warning?

Four decades ago, only eight fabricators (all captive) could make HLC MLBs. Today, more than 50 fabricators worldwide handle fabrication of such boards “in volume.”

In 1990, IBM Yasu made a first sizable BGA substrate to assemble “one not so high-density chip” with lines/spaces of “sensational” 100µm. It was sensational. Today, the size of advanced substrates is becoming larger, exceeding 150mm x150mm with lines/spaces down to 3µm, mounting up to six chips and 50 or so HBMs. Some experts speculate that the size may reach 250mm x 250mm and layer count may exceed 30 layers in the future.

At the same time, lots of noise is heard that warping and the heat extraction capability of organic substrates is becoming problematic and eventually they will be replaced by glass core substrates for cost reasons as well as technical ones. At this moment, however, no one claims ongoing mass production of glass core substrates, including Intel which pushed the technology in 2023. If and when glass core substrates replace organic ones, what will happen to the $30 billion investment made by the current leaders in package substrates?

Figures 2 and 3 show some of the multi-billion plants being built. And these are just the tip of iceberg.End of article content

Dr. Hayao Nakahara is president of N.T. Information and a contributing editor to PCD&F/CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY; nakanti@yahoo.com. He is the world’s foremost authority on the worldwide printed circuit board market.