October 6, 2026 / SemiMedia / — AI investment is spreading beyond GPUs, servers and cloud infrastructure into semiconductor manufacturing equipment, according to Bernstein's latest Global Semiconductor Equipment Tracker, as advanced logic, HBM, DRAM, NAND and advanced packaging capacity continue to expand.

Bernstein expects the global wafer fab equipment market to grow 26.3% in 2026 and another 32.6% in 2027. On a compounded basis, that would put the 2027 market roughly 67.5% above 2025 levels, pointing to a multi-year equipment investment cycle driven by AI-related semiconductor demand.

Recent Japanese equipment data already show strong momentum. Semiconductor equipment supplier sales in Japan reached about JPY545 billion in August, up 50% year over year. Front-end wafer manufacturing equipment sales increased 36.6%, assembly equipment rose 22%, and test equipment surged 98%. Although monthly sales declined about 4%, the three-month moving average continued to rise.

Bernstein said Agentic AI could add another layer of infrastructure demand. Unlike conventional single-turn inference, AI agents continuously perform planning, retrieval, tool calls, code execution and verification, increasing demand not only for GPUs but also for CPU scheduling, DRAM, HBM and SSD capacity.

The report also highlighted a "complexity dividend" for equipment suppliers. Gate-all-around transistors, high-layer-count 3D NAND, HBM stacking and advanced packaging technologies such as CoWoS require more deposition, etch, CMP, inspection and test steps. As chip and package values rise, manufacturers also have a stronger economic incentive to spend more on inspection and testing to reduce costly failures.

Among Japanese suppliers, Bernstein highlighted Tokyo Electron for its exposure to advanced logic and DRAM investment, DISCO for its leading position in wafer grinding and dicing, Lasertec for EUV mask inspection, and Advantest for its strong exposure to HBM and AI GPU testing.

The firm also remains positive on major U.S. equipment suppliers including Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA, as well as selected Chinese semiconductor equipment companies. Bernstein expects industry growth to be supported by three forces at the same time: capacity expansion, rising process complexity, and higher spending on advanced packaging and test.

As memory and logic manufacturers raise capital expenditure, AI infrastructure investment is moving further upstream into semiconductor production. Bernstein expects this combination of capacity growth and technology upgrades to support a new expansion cycle for the global semiconductor equipment industry.