SEMICON West 2026 opened in San Francisco with a champagne toast as the global semiconductor industry surpassed $1 trillion in annual revenue for the first time, driven largely by AI infrastructure and memory demand.

IEA projections show AI and data-center power demand could strain grids, with analysts estimating that 30–50% of planned capacity may be delayed due to interconnection and power availability issues.

Discussions at the program cover supply chain resilience, geopolitics, Wall Street views on sustainability of AI-driven capex, and cybersecurity concerns for fabs and the broader supply chain.

The event signals a geographic shift, with Phoenix emerging as a manufacturing hub while San Francisco loses a major tech gathering and San Jose sits between design and manufacturing geographies.

A core theme is energy constraints tied to AI growth, featuring a session on bending the curve for radical efficiency and the need for industry-wide collaboration to curb power use.

CEOs and leaders from Synopsys, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Micron, SkyWater Technology, and U.S. government officials from the Commerce Department, State Department, and NSF attend, highlighting CHIPS Act policy and national strategy implications.

This marks the last SEMICON West in San Francisco, as the conference will move to the Phoenix Convention Center in 2027 with a spring schedule, reflecting Arizona’s concentration of semiconductor manufacturing, including TSMC’s North Phoenix campus.

SEMI highlights workforce gaps through the Workforce Development Pavilion, projecting a shortage of about 157,000 workers by 2030, with NSF-led initiatives to bolster training via the National Network for Microelectronics Education.

APHI Summit focuses on co-packaged optics as a key path to efficiency and lower latency in AI data-center interconnects, with the CPO market expected to exceed $20 billion by 2036.

Overall, the industry stands at a turning point: celebrating the $1 trillion milestone while facing energy, workforce, supply chain, and cybersecurity challenges that will shape a potential $2 trillion trajectory in coming years.

The milestone was reached four years earlier than projected, with 2025 sales at $791.7 billion and a 2026 growth forecast of about 26% from the Semiconductor Industry Association.