The three major HBM suppliers highlighted HBM4 mass production and HBM4e development, as competition shifts toward pricing power and next-generation specs. Suppliers also remain positive on long-term HBM pricing despite stronger conventional DRAM profitability.
CSP Capex fuels AI server growth; GPU and ASIC engines drive market upgrades as liquid cooling adoption accelerates.
AI server market expands robustly in 2026 amid hyperscaler capex, NVIDIA racks, and tight HBM-CoWoS supply chains.
NA CSPs raised Capex sharply, cementing AI infra as core strategy and powering AI server and data center growth.
HBM grows strongly in 2026 as CSP/ASIC demand lifts HBM3e prices; SK hynix leads, Samsung rebounds, Micron expands TSV.
Driven by supply shortages and bottoming supplier inventories, server memory makers now hold absolute pricing power, leading to continuous and substantial upward revisions in contract prices. Although suppliers are shifting mobile capacity to servers to boost supply, robust demand fueled by cloud providers' expanding capital expenditures on AI and data centers keeps the supply gap wide open. Consequently, the long-term price outlook remains bullish.
As U.S. export controls extend from chips to AI infrastructure, the traditional optical interconnect industry is undergoing supply chain restructuring. While optical modules are not subject to blanket bans, they are now governed by system‑level controls. By leveraging its semiconductor ecosystem and investing in SiPh, CPO, advanced packaging and testing capabilities, Taiwan can capture North American supply‑chain de‑risking demand and reposition itself as a strategic AI partner.
Global Server Market – Trends and Outlook for 2Q26
Driven by the demand for both AI and general-purpose servers, enterprise SSDs are facing a severe supply-demand gap, leading to continuous surges in contract prices. Meanwhile, to address the pain point of high AI inference costs, suppliers are accelerating the rollout of low-latency, high-performance SSDs. This is driving a transformation in storage architectures and creating a high-margin blue ocean market.
Global CSPs expand AI infrastructure investment, with Google and Microsoft leading on TPU and GPU racks while Chinese peers diversify amid geopolitical constraints.
Research Areas:
Industry News
