McKinsey raised its 2030 semiconductor forecast by 44% to $2.3 trillion, with shipments remaining almost unchanged, driven entirely by a six-fold increase in DRAM prices.

McKinsey raised its 2030 semiconductor forecast by 44% to $2.3 trillion, with shipments remaining almost unchanged, driven entirely by a six-fold increase in DRAM prices.

The semiconductor industry is undergoing a structural shift driven by AI demand: McKinsey has significantly raised its forecast for the global semiconductor market size in 2030, but the growth rate of shipments has not been significantly revised upwards, with price increases becoming the main driver of market expansion.

McKinsey's latest research has revised its baseline forecast for the global semiconductor market size in 2030 upward to $2.3 trillion from $1.6 trillion in the fall of 2025, representing an increase of approximately 44%. Global wafer shipments are expected to maintain an average annual growth rate of approximately 7% during the same period, largely consistent with previous forecasts. This means that the increased market value will come more from rising ASPs (Average Selling Price) for advanced process chips and memory, rather than simply from increased shipment volume.

Investment in AI infrastructure is the core driver of this change. The five largest hyperscale cloud service providers plan to spend a total of approximately $800 billion in capital expenditures in 2026, which will further increase to $1 trillion in 2027, with the vast majority going towards AI infrastructure, continuously driving up demand and prices for advanced process chips and memory.

In the first half of 2026, global semiconductor sales growth reached its highest level since the mid-1980s, and in July it hit a 40-year high; shortly thereafter, global semiconductor market revenue surpassed $1 trillion for the first time.

Market size forecast revised upward by 44%, but shipment growth has not accelerated significantly.

McKinsey has revised its forecast for the global semiconductor market's CAGR from 13% to 19% for 2025-2030, significantly higher than the historical average of 9% from 2014 to 2024. The forecast range is $1.7 trillion to $2.6 trillion, with a baseline scenario of $2.3 trillion.

This forecast includes fabless companies, OEMs with self-developed chips, and vertically integrated chip companies, and incorporates more detailed data on Chinese companies. Therefore, the forecast value may be higher than that of some other institutions. Another major analysis firm also predicts that the market size will reach $2.3 trillion by 2030, while two other institutions have forecasts ranging from $1.7 trillion to $2 trillion.

More noteworthy is the “significant decoupling” between revenue growth and shipment growth. McKinsey predicts that the overall wafer volume CAGR will be around 7% by 2030, roughly in line with the fall 2025 forecast, and has not increased in tandem with the significant upward revision of market size forecasts.

This means the market size forecast for 2030 has been revised upward from $1.6 trillion to $2.3 trillion, with the main increase coming from rising ASPs and changes in product mix, rather than a significant increase in chip shipments . If AI demand continues to expand, the semiconductor industry's long-standing growth model, dominated by capacity cycles, may change.

Advanced process ASP rises against historical trend

Server and data center chips will be the fastest-growing sector. McKinsey predicts that revenue in this market will increase from $330 billion in 2025 to $1.2 trillion in 2030, a CAGR of 29%; wireless communication chips will rank second, with an estimated additional revenue of approximately $205 billion, a CAGR of 10%.

Regarding advanced manufacturing processes, McKinsey defines 7nm and below nodes as advanced processes and points out that their ASP trend has reversed historical patterns. In the past, wafer ASP typically declined continuously in the first two years after product launch; for example, the annual decline was about 10% for 28nm wafers and about 25% for 150nm wafers.

Currently, the ASP ( Average Selling Price) of 3nm and 5nm wafers is rising at a rate of 2% or higher per year, primarily driven by strong demand for AI and high-performance computing, and limited advanced production capacity. It is projected that by 2030, rising ASPs, increased shipments, and changes in product mix will collectively contribute approximately $710 billion in incremental value to advanced process chips.

DRAM prices have increased sixfold, with memory contributing $560 billion in incremental revenue.

The price changes in memory are even more pronounced. AI model training and inference require large amounts of high-capacity, high-bandwidth storage, with HBM being particularly constrained by supply. Since the beginning of 2023, DRAM prices have increased approximately sixfold, and the ASP has returned to its 2011 high ; based on historical price levels corresponding to the same production growth rate, the current DRAM ASP is about 550% higher.

Supply is unlikely to increase rapidly in the short term. McKinsey predicts that if some long-term supply expansion measures proceed smoothly, memory supply may begin to catch up with demand around 2027, and prices will subsequently tend to fall, but may still be higher than historical norms.

Commercial HBM gross margins are projected to decline from approximately 80% in 2024 to approximately 50% in 2030, primarily due to increased competition in the accelerator market, rather than a decrease in ASP. Even so, memory is still expected to contribute approximately $560 billion in incremental market value , becoming a significant source of AI-driven semiconductor growth.

Mature process technologies see increased volume but decreased prices, resulting in relatively limited contribution to overall growth.

Mature process technologies and other chips will also benefit from the expansion of AI infrastructure, including field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) that can be flexibly adapted to AI architectures, interconnect and data flow components, and data center power electronics. Sub-sectors such as photonics and power devices are also expected to grow rapidly.

Overall, however, this segment's growth is far less robust than that of advanced process chips and memory. Shipments will continue to increase, but ASPs are expected to continue declining, with the segment projected to contribute only about $100 billion in incremental revenue by 2030.

Therefore, McKinsey's upward revision is not simply a matter of raising semiconductor shipment forecasts, but rather a reassessment of the impact of the AI supply-demand gap on chip prices and product structure. With no significant upward revision in shipment growth, the rising ASPs of advanced processes and memory are becoming the main driving force propelling the semiconductor market towards a size exceeding $2 trillion.

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