The explosive growth of the generative AI industry has driven exponential growth in computing power demand and thoroughly disrupted the underlying order of the global technology industry chain. Deeply bound to it, the semiconductor industry is now facing an unprecedented structural transformation.
As large AI models shift from the training era into the inference era, computing power is no longer merely an incremental business in a specific niche segment. Instead, it has become the core variable reshaping the division of labor, value, and competition across the entire industry chain. Consequently, we can observe that leading semiconductor companies along this chain, in order to rapidly seize the initiative in the AI era, have launched a wave of intensive mergers and acquisitions covering the upstream and downstream sectors from 2025 to 2026. Whether it is underlying EDA simulation tools, cloud and edge AI chips, or advanced packaging and testing manufacturers related to chip production, as well as semiconductor equipment manufacturers, all have successively acquired AI-related companies and core businesses.
From the perspective of market size, Deloitte’s 2026 Global Semiconductor Industry Trends Report predicts that the global chip market size will reach $975 billion in 2026, with generative AI-related revenue accounting for more than half. Under such enormous market dividends, the widespread mergers and acquisitions are by no means mere capital speculation. Rather, they are a clear signal that the semiconductor industry is undergoing a comprehensive transformation toward AI and that the industry landscape is facing a fundamental reshaping.
