TSMC Forecasts AI Adoption Could Help Global Semiconductor Market Reach $1.5 Trillion Milestone by 2030

AI is now an important part of many people's lives, with AI agents capable of drafting emails, planning trips, editing images, generating videos, researching topics, and vibe coding apps. While AI is seemingly making users' lives easier, reports suggest that it has also created a shortage of memory and storage components for laptops and smartphones, forcing OEMs to raise prices of devices. AI's global market size has also seen exponential growth, with companies investing heavily in building data centres.

The unprecedented rise in AI has also forced chipmakers to focus on redirecting semiconductors for the new industry. Now, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reportedly sees the global chip market grow exponentially by the end of this decade, predominantly due to AI.

AI and High-Performance Computing to Account for the Majority of Global Chip Market

Citing a presentation prepared by the Taiwan-based chipmaker for a tech symposium, Reuters reports that TSMC expects the global semiconductor market to reach the $1.5 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,43,89,471 crore) mark by 2030, taking it to the size of a country's GDP. Further, the chipmaker reportedly forecasts that AI and high-performance computing will account for a majority of this market share, nearing 55 percent.

On the other hand, smartphones are expected to account for a far smaller 20 percent share of the global semiconductor market's size in 2030, the report added. Since semiconductors are also ubiquitously used in the automotive industry, powering the digital cluster of cars and bikes, TSMC predicts that it will account for 10 percent of the $1.5 trillion global market size of the semiconductor industry.

On top of this, TSMC is reportedly in the process of expanding its manufacturing capacity at a faster pace in 2026. It further plans to set up nine phases of wafer ⁠fabrication and advanced packaging units this year. The company might also ramp up its capacity for 2nm chipsets and its next-generation A16 SoCs, predicted to see a 70 percent compounded annual growth rate between 2026 and 2028.

TSMC's Chip on Wafer on Substrate packaging technology, which is used in chipsets designed by Nvidia for AI processes, will also reportedly see an annual growth of over 80 percent by 2027, with 2022 as the base year. Meanwhile, TSMC reportedly said that the demand for AI accelerator wafer will ‌increase “⁠11-fold” by the end of this year from 2022.

These numbers portend the growth AI and semiconductor industries stand to witness in the coming years. According to a UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report, the global AI market size stood at $189 billion in 2023. However, the UN body predicts that the industry could grow to the size of $4.8 trillion by 2033.