Semiconductor industry guide 2026
Who makes the world's chips, how big the market has become, how a chip is made, and what India's chip programme means for component buyers.
The chip market at a glance
2025 was the biggest year the semiconductor industry has ever had, driven by demand for AI data-centre hardware.
The world's largest semiconductor companies
The ten biggest chip vendors ranked by 2025 semiconductor revenue. Together they earned about 62% of all chip revenue.
Source: Gartner, preliminary 2025 results (January 2026).
| Rank | Company | Headquarters | 2025 revenue | Market share | Growth vs 2024 | Best known for |
|---|
The largest chip foundries
A foundry manufactures chips that other companies design. Most of the world's advanced processors, including those from NVIDIA, AMD, Apple and Qualcomm, are made this way.
The ten largest foundries earned a combined US$169.5 billion in 2025, up 26% on 2024. TSMC alone took close to seven in every ten dollars of that revenue, helped by demand for its 3-nanometre process.
Source: TrendForce full-year 2025 foundry ranking (March 2026).
Who leads which segment
The companies a components buyer meets most often, grouped by the kind of chip they are known for.
How a chip is made
A modern chip goes through hundreds of process steps, repeated layer by layer, and can take around three months from bare wafer to finished part.
India's semiconductor programme
India is building a domestic chip industry, starting with packaging and test plants and moving towards wafer fabs.
What this means for component buyers
Most chips used in India are still imported, and will be for some years. As local packaging and test plants ramp up, some packaged parts may become available with shorter lead times and simpler logistics. For current production, end-of-life and hard-to-find parts, global sourcing remains essential.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers to the questions buyers ask about the chip industry.