
Gartner is bullish on AI, sees 12.6% chip market growth in 2025

Global semiconductor revenue is set to rise by 12.6 percent in 2025 to US$705 billion, according to Gartner.
This will be driven by AI demand and come after a strong 2024 which saw semiconductor revenue at US$626 billion, up 18.1 percent compared to 2023, the market analyst said.
The market researcher’s forecast for 2025 lower than the 15 percent predicted by Future Horizons but above the most recent forecast of World Semiconductor Trade Statistics of 11.2 percent. Semiconductor Intelligence pegs 2025 chip market growth at just 6 percent.
Chip market to weaken in 2025, says Semiconductor Intelligence
Samsung Electronics was Gartner’s top-ranked semiconductor vendor in 2024 with an increase in annual sales of 62.5 percent putting it ahead of second-ranked Intel. Nvidia climbed to third place with chip sales that nearly doubled on demand for its AI acceleration chips.
Memory makers SK Hynix and Micron also showed strong sales increases. In the case of Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix sales were driven by high average selling prices for memory, particularly for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in demand for AI acceleration in data centers. The revenue from chips sold for data center applications almost doubled in 2024 to reach US$112 billion, Gartner said.

Top 10 semiconductor vendors ranked by worldwide revenue in 2024 (billions of US dollars). Source: Gartner.
“Graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI processors used in data center applications (servers and accelerator cards) were the key drivers for the chip sector in 2024,” commented in George Brocklehurst, an analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “The rising demand for AI and generative AI workloads led data centers to become the second-largest market for semiconductors in 2024, behind smartphones. Data center semiconductor revenue totaled $112 billion in 2024, up from $64.8 billion in 2023,” he added.
Eleven semiconductor vendors in the top 25 experienced double-digit percentage growth on annual basis while eight posted revenue declines, Gartner reported.
Intel was notable under-performer in the ranking as its strength in processors for PCs and servers was not matched by any progress in AI accelerators. As a result, Intel’s semiconductor revenue growth as flat in 2024.
Non-memory revenue increased 6.9 percent in 2024 while memory revenue increased 71.8 percent. As a result, memory’s share of total semiconductor sales increased to 25.2 percent of the total market in 2024 and non-memory represented 74.8 percent.
“Memory and AI semiconductors will drive near-term growth, with HBM projected to account for an increasing share of DRAM revenue, reaching 19.2 percent in 2025,” said Brocklehurst. “HBM revenue is estimated to increase 66.3 percent in 2025, reaching US$19.8 billion.”
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