"AI", "AI", "AI" is in almost every other news story in recent years. The new whim of mankind requires a lot of electricity, a lot of water, and, of course, a lot of processors to calculate all those funny cat pictures, digital porn, and dipshots, and at the same time help people radically simplify and change some of their usual activities. The AI fever has led to a rapid rise in the shares of semiconductor companies, which are throwing coal into the 21st century AI locomotive's furnace - computing power, i.e. semiconductor chips or chips.
Country USA
Year of foundation 1993
Market capitalization $3.367 trillion
NVIDIA started 30 years ago with graphics accelerators, but games and gamers are no longer the company's main source of revenue. Data centers, supercomputers, and AI are what bring in the bulk of NVIDIA's money now, with the gaming division accounting for only 15-17% of revenue, plus a little more from professional 3D visualization and the automotive industry.
As a reminder, NVIDIA does not have its own factories; it is an engineering, design, and marketing company that orders the production of its own chips from contractors such as Taiwan's TSMC.
Country USA
Year of foundation 1961
Market capitalization $1.104 trillion
Broadcom is one of the oldest companies on this list, having changed many names in its history. It was created as HP Associates, the semiconductor division of Hewlett-Packard, but in 1999 it started operating as an independent company Agilent Technologies. In 2005, it became Avago Technologies, in 2016, Broadcom Limited, and finally in 2018, it became Broadcom Inc.
Broadcom generates 58% of its revenue from semiconductor sales and 42% from software and services. Broadcom chips, which power wired and wireless networking equipment, can be found in almost all servers, storage systems, routers, routers, computers, and mobile devices. Pick up almost any device, and there's a 99% chance it has a Broadcom chip.
On the waves of the AI boom, Broadcom Inc. has entered the Top 10 most expensive companies in the world, where it competes for the 9th place with TSMC.
Country Republic of China (Taiwan)
Year of foundation 1987
Market capitalization $1.039 trillion
It is the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer and Taiwan's largest company. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, or TSMC, was established in 1987 under the patronage of the highest executive body of Taiwan as part of the transformation of the Republic of China into a technological country. Currently, TSMC's semiconductor exports account for 25% of Taiwan's GDP, and the company's shares are responsible for 30% of the Taiwan Stock Exchange index.
Country Netherlands
Year of foundation 1984
Market capitalization $274.8 billion
The Dutch holding ASML is the world's largest manufacturer of photolithography equipment for the production of semiconductors, controlling more than 67% of all global sales of photolithography machines. In some segments, this position is almost monopolistic, for example, in the production of the most advanced chips of TSMC and Samsung Electronics.
The largest modern ASML photolithography machines cost more than $380 million and weigh as much as two Airbus A320 aircraft. Assembling and debugging such monsters requires the work of 250 engineers over 6 months. That is, the production of each such machine is almost a one-of-a-kind, unique process, so you have to understand why the deployment of new chip production facilities is so slow.
The number of orders at ASML is growing, and the company plans to reach a production rate of 20 machines per year by 2028. Of course, those that produce chips using 2-3nm technology.
Country South Korea
Year of foundation 1969
Market capitalization $240.4 billion
Samsung Electronics is not just about smartphones, smartwatches and home appliances. It is much more, including semiconductors.
The Samsung Group, which includes Samsung Electronics, began in 1969 as one of South Korea's financial and industrial chaebols (family financial groups), and at some points in history was involved in almost every possible activity, from manufacturing cars and ships to insurance and healthcare.
Samsung Electronics has been manufacturing memory chips since 1993 and is one of the largest memory chip manufacturers in the world. In addition, Samsung produces Exynos series microprocessors not only for its own mobile devices, but also for the automotive industry, such as Volkswagen cars.
In fact, Samsung Electronics is one of the few companies in the world that manufactures both components and user devices based on these components.
Country USA
Year of foundation 1969
Market capitalization $198.7 billion
The share of AMD processors in the desktop segment reached 28.7% in the third quarter of 2024, and 24.2% in the server segment. These are the highest figures in the history of the confrontation between AMD and Intel.
But AMD seems to have lost the battle in the GPU segment to NVIDIA. While in 2010 AMD controlled 44.5% of the market, in 2024 it will have only 10%. And yes, we are talking not only about user GPUs, but also about graphical computing modules for servers, i.e. for AI.
In 1970-2000, AMD had its own chip production, but in 2009 it was spun off into a separate company, GlobalFoundries. Since then, AMD has been a fabless company that orders chip production from GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and TSMC.
Country USA
Year of foundation 1985
Market capitalization $171.7 billion
Qualcomm is known to our readers primarily for its Snapdragon series ARM processors, which are used by almost all smartphone manufacturers. But the company started out by researching and implementing 2G mobile communication standards.
Qualcomm owns key patents related to CDMA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA, 4G and 5G standards, so the company is occasionally involved in litigation with other manufacturers such as Broadcom, Nokia, Apple and even the all-powerful FCC (Federal Trade Commission).
Today, Qualcomm processors and specialized chips are used in mobile devices, the automotive industry, audio systems, smart home systems, cameras, robots, and almost everything that requires powerful computing with low consumption. Like most of the semiconductor companies in the Top 10, Qualcomm does not have its own production facilities.
Country USA
Year of foundation 1930
Market capitalization $171.7 billion
Texas Instruments is the oldest company in the Top 10, having started its operations long before semiconductors and processors themselves appeared. TI, then Geophysical Service Incorporated, was founded in 1930. The first products were measuring devices for the military and seismography. The company received the name Texas Instruments in 1951, when it became clear that the electronic equipment produced by the Laboratory and Manufacturing division was the main source of money.
Texas Instruments was at the forefront of the semiconductor industry, producing the first commercial transistor in 1954, the first integrated circuit, and the first transistor radio. In our country, TI is known for its unsurpassed engineering calculators, which the company has been producing since 1967. Texas Instruments is considered the inventor of pocket calculators, which were mostly desktop calculators before that.
Today, Texas Instruments manufactures analog chips, embedded processors, DLP chips for projectors, including those for cinemas, microcontrollers, amplifiers, converters, sensors, and much more.
Country USA
Year of foundation 1967
Market capitalization $133.2 billion
Applied Materials is a competitor of the Dutch ASML in the supply of equipment for semiconductor manufacturers.
The company offers equipment, services, and software for manufacturers of chips, LCD panels, solar panels, automotive, protective film coating, and more.
Country United Kingdom
Year of foundation 1990
Market capitalization $132.3 billion
Arm Holdings traces its history back to a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple and VLSI Technology, which was to continue the development of the Acorn RISC Machine, a RISC processor used in the British Acorn Archimedes PCs and intended to be used in the Apple Newton PDA. The first name of the joint company - Widelogic Limited - was changed to Advanced RISC Machines Ltd a month later, and in 1998 it became simply ARM Ltd. Now 88% of Arm shares are owned by the Japanese investment holding SoftBank Group.
Arm does not produce its own processors, but licenses the RISC architecture and instruction set to other manufacturers, such as AMD, Atmel, Cirrus Logic, Intel, Marvell, NXP, Samsung, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Sony Ericsson, and Texas Instruments. Arm processors dominate the portable computing segment and are steadily making their way to the desktop and server markets. The latest ARMv9.2-A architecture is embodied in the ARM Cortex-A520, ARM Cortex-A720, ARM Cortex-X4, ARM Neoverse V3, and ARM Cortex-X925 chips.
Semiconductor companies outside the Top 10
11. Analog Devices (USA) – $105.5 billion
12. Marvell Technology (USA) – $96.6 billion
13. Micron (USA) – $95 billion
14. Lam Research (USA) – $92.8 billion
15. Intel (USA) – $85.5 billion
16. KLA (USA) – $84.8 billion
17. SK Hynix (South Korea) – $81.4 billion
18. Synopsys (USA) – $75.2 billion
19. Tokyo Electron (Japan) – $71 billion
20. MediaTek (Taiwan) – $68.8 billion
21. NXP (Netherlands) – $52.7 billion
22. SMIC (China) – $50.9 billion
23. Advantest (Japan) – $43.4 billion
24. Infineon (Germany) – $42.5 billion
25. Microchip (USA) – $30.7 billion
26. DISCO (Japan) – $29.6 billion
27. Monolithic Power Systems (USA) – $29.4 billion
28. ASM International (Netherlands) – $28.6 billion
29. ON Semiconductor (USA) – $27 billion
30. GlobalFoundries (USA) – $23.9 billion