Chipmaking investment enters a $2.3 trillion decade

In May 2024, SIA and Boston Consulting Group projected around $2.3 trillion of private-sector investment in wafer fabrication between 2024 and 2032, compared with $720 billion in the ten years before the CHIPS Act (2013–2022). The United States was projected to capture 28% of that capital expenditure, against a pre-CHIPS pace of 9%. These figures are the report's 2024 forecast, not today's outcome.

A reversal of a long decline

The report expected the United States to increase its fab capacity by 203% between 2022 and 2032, the largest projected increase in the world, raising its share of global aggregate fab capacity from 10% to 14%. In the absence of policy action, the report estimated the US share would instead have slipped to 8%. Europe and Japan were projected to host a meaningful share — about 12% — of sub-10 nm logic capacity by 2032.

Resilience is more than new fabs

The report defines resilience broadly as improved geographic diversification across the whole supply chain, not only wafer fabrication. Assembly, test and packaging was expected to remain concentrated in Mainland China and Taiwan, and the report argued that scale and openness are critical: policies aimed at full self-sufficiency would, in its analysis, undermine resilience and add cost.

Limitations

This article presents a forecast published in May 2024. Actual investment, capacity and regional shares will differ from the projections, and the figures should be read as the report's analysis at that date. Capacity shares are based on fabs above 5,000 wafer starts per month with 8-inch or larger wafers, and exclude research fabs; rows may not sum to 100% due to rounding.