Semiconductor silicon wafers, a new round of price increases is imminent?

With the recovery of mature process demand and the continuous expansion of AI applications, coupled with high energy, freight, and raw material costs, semiconductor wafer manufacturers have begun to brew a new wave of price hikes. According to Taiwan's Commercial Times today, GlobalWafers, Wafer Works, and Taiwan Semi are showing signs of price hikes, with the 6-inch wafers of these suppliers already completing the price hike, and demand for 8-inch wafers is rising rapidly, while negotiations for a new round of prices for 12-inch products have started with customers. Among them, GlobalWafers stated that the global silicon wafer market is showing an unbalanced but upward recovery trend in 2026, with the recent market warming trend becoming more clear. Demand for high-end AI and advanced process continues to be strong, and non-AI markets such as automotive and industrial control are gradually recovering. The company is actively negotiating prices with customers to reflect the increased costs of energy, freight, and raw materials. Wafer Works stated that it had already adjusted the price of 6-inch wafers earlier this year, and the market is currently in short supply. The reason behind this is not direct pressure from AI on mature process capacity, but rather the continuous reduction or exit of 6-inch production lines by silicon wafer manufacturers such as SUMCO and Siltronic this year, coupled with adjustments in capacity allocation by suppliers based on product mix and customer structure. Furthermore, Wafer Works pointed out that there is still room for price hikes in the 8-inch wafer market in the second half of the year, as the demand recovery is not only coming from PMICs, but also from overall improvement in power semiconductor-related applications, including automotive electronics, industrial control, and power management. Taiwan Semi stated that both the 8-inch and 12-inch wafer production lines are fully loaded. The demand for 8-inch wafers has increased significantly recently, and many customers have already started discussions for additional orders in the second half of this year and next year. It is estimated that there is room to adjust prices for 8-inch products. As for 12-inch products, the company has started negotiations with customers for a new price adjustment mechanism in the second half of the year, but there is still a gap between the price increase that customers can accept and the company's expectations, and both parties are still in ongoing negotiations. Several manufacturers are advancing price negotiations for 12-inch wafers, which have become the absolute mainstream substrate for global wafer manufacturing. Advanced logic and memory chips below 90 nanometers and some high-end analog and sensor chips rely on 12-inch wafer production. With the increasing requirements for chip computing power and storage capacity brought by emerging applications represented by AI, semiconductor products continue to iterate, and demand continues to increase. HBM, due to wafer stacking, yield constraints, and larger chip sizes, consumes three times as much as traditional DRAM for the same capacity, significantly increasing the silicon wafer consumption per memory unit. At the same time, 3D NAND will fully switch to double wafer bonding technology, doubling the demand for 12-inch wafers. SEMI predicts that the global demand for 12-inch wafers in 2026 will be around 10 million wafers per month. This article is reprinted from "Cailian News"; GMTEight Editor: Chen Siyu.