TechInsights, the authoritative information platform for the semiconductor industry, released its 2026 Outlook Report Summary that covers key technology and vertical market trends and forward-looking expectations for next year.
According to David MacQueen, TechInsights’ director, executive insights, “Datacenters will continue to drive growth in 2026, particularly for accelerators and processors and support for large language models (LLMs), resulting in a bottleneck for power. Despite on-device inference benefits like lower costs, power efficiency, and privacy, cloud AI will be the key market driver, and the shift to autonomous edge machines will not become a mass-market trend in 2026.”
The industry will reach a pivotal moment in 2026 as it transitions from FinFET to gate-all-around (GAA) transistors with next-generation 2nm manufacturing processes, promising lower power consumption and improved performance. High-bandwidth memory (HBM), the most high-margin memory product ever, used almost exclusively for artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators, continues to drive the memory market upward. In the future, it could be replaced by high-bandwidth Flash (HBF) memory; TechInsights expects to see the release of HBF prototypes in 2026. Additionally, next year promises to be the inflection point for silicon photonics, in the form of co-packaged optics (CPO), and glass substrates, which help to improve data transfer performance while addressing heat dissipation and power usage.
“The rapidly shifting technology landscape seems almost slow compared to the pace of change happening at a global political level, with tariffs and trade restrictions creating a fluctuating business environment,” MacQueen added. “The industry will have to navigate an increasingly fractious and fragmented geopolitical landscape. Tariffs and export restrictions, particularly affecting trade involving the US and China, are more likely to escalate than abate in 2026.”
TechInsights will release its semiconductor market outlook report series, which covers memory, advanced packaging, artificial intelligence (AI), automotive, PC/laptop, mobile and more, from October through November, according to the release schedule below. The TechInsights Outlook Summit Webinar Series will provide attendees with a summary of the reports and will be held from October 15, 2025 through January 21, 2026.
Access all reports for free here. The 2026 Market Outlook Report release schedule is as follows:
- LIVE: Advanced Packaging report release
- LIVE. Memory report release
- LIVE. AI report release
- LIVE: Compute report release
- LIVE: Power report release
- LIVE: Sensor report release
- Oct. 22: Automotive report release
- Oct. 29: Manufacturing report release
- Nov. 5: PC/Laptop report release
- Nov. 5: Connectivity report release
- Nov. 12: Mobile report release
- Nov. 19: Consumer electronics report release
To learn more about TechInsights, visit www.techinsights.com.
