Record volume of IC wafer capacity coming online in 2025
A record volume of IC wafer capacity is set to come online in 2025, according to the latest Global Wafer Capacity 2024 report from Knometa Research. This surge in capacity comes amidst challenging global economic conditions and a recovering semiconductor market, which began showing signs of improvement in late 2023.
Following a sharp decline in IC unit shipments during 2023, the industry is forecasted to experience a unit growth of approximately 11% in both 2024 and 2025. The wafer capacity expansion in 2024 is expected to be modest, at around 4%, as manufacturers allow capacity utilisation rates to recover from the lows of 2023.
Construction on several fabs began in 2022 with the intention of starting operations in 2024. However, due to the market downturn, the start date for some of these fabs has been postponed to 2025. This delay, coupled with the opening of additional fabs already scheduled for 2025, is predicted to result in an unprecedented volume of wafer capacity coming online.
The Knometa Research report projects that 23.1 million 200mm-equivalent wafers per year of capacity will be put into production in 2025, surpassing the previous peak of 18.5 million wafers in 2021. In terms of 300mm wafer equivalents, 10.3 million wafers per year of capacity will be introduced in 2025, signifying an 8% increase compared to the 2024 capacity level.
In total, seventeen new fab lines for IC production are slated to start operations next year.
| Company | Location | Focus |
| HH Grace | Wuxi, China | 300mm wafers for foundry services |
| Intel | New Albany, Ohio, USA | 300mm wafers for advanced logic and foundry |
| JS Foundry | Ojiya, Niigata, Japan | 200mm wafers for ICs and discretes |
| Kioxia | Kitakami, Iwate, Japan | 300mm wafers for 3D NAND |
| Micron | Boise, Idaho, USA | 300mm wafers for DRAM |
| Pengxin Micro | Shenzhen, China | 300mm wafers for foundry |
| Samsung | Pyeongtaek, South Korea (P4 fab) | 300mm wafers for 3D NAND and DRAM |
| SK Hynix | Dalian, China (Fab 68 expansion) | 300mm wafers for 3D NAND and DRAM |
| SMIC | Shanghai, China (SN2 fab) | 300mm wafers for foundry |
| Texas Instruments | Sherman, Texas, USA | 300mm wafers for analog and mixed-signal |
| TSMC | Tainan, Taiwan (Fab 18, Phase 8) | 300mm wafers for foundry |
| UMC | Singapore (Fab 12i, Phase 3) | 300mm wafers for foundry |
