Semiconductor revenue increased by 21 percent to $793 billion in 2025 thanks to AI chips.
The global semiconductor industry showed strong growth in 2025. According to preliminary figures from Gartner, total revenue increased by 21 percent year-on-year to $793 billion. The growth was mainly driven by chips for artificial intelligence.
AI pushes market to record high
AI-related semiconductors such as processors, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and network chips accounted for nearly a third of all sales in 2025. Revenue from AI processors alone exceeded the $200 billion mark. Gartner expects investments in AI infrastructure to rise to more than $1.3 trillion in 2026. HBM played a major role in this. This type of memory accounts for 23 percent of the total DRAM market and generated more than $30 billion in revenue, mainly due to the rapid rollout of AI servers.
Nvidia strengthens leading position
Nvidia remained by far the largest semiconductor supplier in 2025. The company generated $125.7 billion in revenue, 63.9 percent more than the year before, and increased its lead over Samsung Electronics to $53 billion. This makes Nvidia the first chipmaker ever with more than $100 billion in annual revenue. Samsung remained second with $72.5 billion, mainly due to memory chips. SK Hynix climbed to third place thanks to strong HBM sales, while Intel lost further market share and fell back to 6 percent.
Gartner expects AI chips to account for more than half of total semiconductor revenue by 2029.