Bank of America raised its US semiconductor equipment market forecast to $110 billion by 2030, effectively doubling prior estimates as memory pricing stabilizes and hyperscalers accelerate AI infrastructure orders. The revision marks the first time a bulge-bracket bank has materially extended the equipment cycle timeline beyond the industry's traditional two-year planning horizon.
The upgrade follows three consecutive quarters of memory contract price increases and confirmation from ASML that extreme ultraviolet lithography tool orders for 2025 already exceed 2024 full-year volumes. BofA analysts cite server-grade high-bandwidth memory as the primary demand driver, with supply constraints now extending into early 2026 for the most advanced packaging equipment. The bank previously projected the equipment market would peak at $58 billion in 2025 before moderating.
The revision carries weight beyond the equipment suppliers. A sustained capital-spending cycle at this scale requires the major foundries and memory manufacturers to commit to fab expansions 18 to 24 months ahead of tool deliveries, effectively locking in capacity decisions through 2027. Samsung and SK Hynix have already announced a combined $52 billion in new memory fab investments across South Korea and the United States, with groundbreaking scheduled for mid-2025. TSMC's Arizona facilities, initially planned for logic production, are now being retrofitted to include advanced packaging lines specifically for AI accelerator modules—a $6.5 billion scope change disclosed in October but not yet reflected in most supply-chain models.
The memory recovery is structural, not cyclical. AI training clusters require eight to twelve times the memory bandwidth of prior-generation servers, and inference workloads at scale are proving even more memory-intensive than the hyperscalers initially modeled. Meta's latest AI infrastructure disclosures show memory costs now represent 41% of total server bills-of-material, up from 23% in 2022. This shifts the constraint from compute chips to memory supply, which has longer lead times and fewer qualified suppliers. The equipment makers with exposure to memory packaging—Applied Materials, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron—are the direct beneficiaries, but the second-order effect is a two-to-three-year visibility window for their own supply chains, something the sector has not seen since the early 2000s.
Operators and allocators should track three specific data points over the next six months: ASML's Q1 2025 order book, due in mid-January, will clarify whether EUV demand is frontloaded or genuinely structural; Samsung's February earnings call, where management typically provides fab capex guidance for the following 18 months; and any changes to US CHIPS Act disbursement schedules, as delayed funding could push some domestic fab timelines into 2027. Applied Materials reports earnings on February 13, and their deferred revenue balance—currently $6.2 billion—will show whether customers are accelerating tool acceptances or asking for delivery delays.
The equipment forecast is the opinion. BofA does not issue seven-year outlooks unless the order pipeline is already visible and the capital allocation irreversible.