From 2025 to 2026, the "chip frenzy" sparked by AI (Artificial Intelligence) has gradually spread from GPUs and computing chips to the analog chip sector. After nearly three years of the "darkest hour" of inventory digestion, the industry has finally reached a bottom and begun to rebound.
01Global Analog Chip Giants Send Strong Signals of Recovery
The latest performance data released by major manufacturers such as Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics confirms that the market's expectation of "AI data center construction driving a strong recovery in analog chip demand" is becoming a reality.
Amid the unprecedented AI wave, the massive chip demand generated by AI training and inference has successfully transmitted from AI chips and memory chips to the analog chip sector, driving industry leaders such as Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, and NXP Semiconductors gradually towards performance recovery.
After the US stock market closed on Tuesday, Eastern Time, Texas Instruments disclosed its latest quarterly results and future outlook. Although its Q4 performance was slightly below the consensus market expectations, in the quarterly outlook, which the market pays more attention to, the company's management provided a stronger-than-expected range for revenue and profit forecasts.
Texas Instruments CEO Haviv Ilan stated on the earnings conference call that orders in the fourth quarter grew significantly, with the growth rate of orders from AI data centers being the strongest. "The market has been very tight; we just need to see how the results turn out." Data shows that the company's data center business revenue for the fourth quarter ending in December grew by 70%.
The company's Head of Investor Relations, Mike Beckman, added that the momentum of revenue growth improved this quarter, backlog orders continued to increase, and the "turnover business" remained at a high level. In this financial report, Texas Instruments specifically added a "data center" category in the data of each department to reflect the expanding market opportunities for its analog and embedded products in this field. As a company that has long held the "top spot" in the global analog chip market, Texas Instruments' performance and outlook are generally regarded as a "barometer of global chip demand."
Similarly, the latest performance of another analog chip giant, Analog Devices (ADI), also sends a clear signal of industry recovery. Data shows that ADI's Q4 2025 revenue increased by 26% year-on-year to $3.076 billion, and Non-GAAP earnings per share were $2.26, both of which were better than market expectations; the company also forecasted Q1 2026 revenue of $3.1 billion and Non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.29, also exceeding market expectations. ADI CEO Vincent Roche stated on the earnings conference call that all segments of the industrial sector are showing growth, mainly benefiting from improved cyclical momentum and strong structural trends such as AI, automation, and the pursuit of efficient and reliable power transmission and distribution. These positive factors provide strong support for the recovery of the analog chip market.
Against the backdrop of steadily recovering demand for analog chips, STMicroelectronics also released its better-than-expected Q4 2025 revenue and Q1 2026 performance guidance. The financial report shows that STMicroelectronics' Q4 revenue increased by 0.2% year-on-year to $3.329 billion, higher than the analysts' average expectation of $3.29 billion; gross profit decreased by 6.5% year-on-year to $1.172 billion, with a gross margin of 35.2%; operating profit was $125 million, down 66.0% year-on-year. Excluding the $141 million impairment charge brought by business restructuring, the operating profit for the quarter was $266 million. By department, the revenue of the Analog, Power, and Discrete, MEMS, and Sensors (APMS) product business unit was $1.861 billion, down 4.6% year-on-year; the revenue of the MCU series products, Mixed-signal and Digital ICs, and RF products (MDRF) business unit was $1.464 billion, up 7.0% year-on-year.
02How AI Drives the Recovery of the Analog Chip Market
The large-scale construction of AI data centers is having a substantive impact on the demand structure for analog chips. Although analog chips do not directly participate in computing, they are a key link in the stability, energy efficiency, and scalability of AI systems, playing an important role especially in the large-scale construction of AI data centers.
Compared with digital chips, analog chips play a key role in the basic functional layers such as power conversion, voltage regulation, and signal chain management. In high-power-density computing clusters, hot-swap control for the 48V busbar architecture, board-level power supply solutions, and current monitoring systems all require dedicated analog devices for support. Once these products complete design-in, they usually have a long supply cycle and stable supporting relationships.
The architecture upgrade of AI servers has further amplified this demand: technological innovations such as multi-GPU interconnection, high-speed interconnection, liquid cooling systems, and power management have directly driven the growth in demand for analog chips (such as PMIC (Power Management IC), signal conditioning chips, SerDes, ADC/DAC, etc.). These chips are core components to ensure the high computing power, high energy efficiency, and high reliability operation of AI servers. The industry generally believes that the demand for analog chips in AI servers is significantly higher than that in general-purpose servers, with core demand concentrated on PMICs — the power of AI servers is 6 to 8 times higher than that of ordinary servers, and the demand for power supplies has also increased synchronously.
Multiphase power supply is the mainstream power supply solution for high-performance computing. Multiphase controllers communicate with XPUs through specific protocols, and different XPU manufacturers adopt different protocols, such as Intel's SVID, AMD's SVI2/3, NVIDIA's OVR, and AVS for ARM-based chips. DrMOS, as a highly efficient and energy-saving technology launched by Intel in 2004, integrates the driver IC and MOSFET high-side and low-side switches into the same package, which not only significantly reduces the area but also greatly reduces the parasitic parameters caused by multiple components, effectively improving power conversion efficiency. DrMOS is mainly divided into two solutions: one is that the driver IC and MOSFET are produced on different wafers and then packaged together, called co-packaged DrMOS; the other is that the driver IC and MOSFET are manufactured on the same die, called single-chip DrMOS. The combination of multiphase controller + DrMOS can provide a stable operating voltage for the XPU and has become the mainstream power supply technology in the industry.
In addition to power management, the demand for signal chain chips is also growing synchronously. Its products, including high-speed interface Redrivers, ADC/DAC, isolators, and sensor interfaces, can be used in high-speed interconnection scenarios such as PCIe 5.0/6.0, CXL, and optical modules to ensure signal integrity. At the same time, in large-scale AI clusters, nanosecond or even femtosecond-level synchronization is required between GPUs/accelerators. Excessive clock jitter will lead to an increase in the bit error rate and FEC retransmissions, ultimately dragging down the effective computing power. When training and inference push clusters to higher link rates and larger scales, the "clock/synchronization/jitter" problem will transform from a secondary factor into a hidden bottleneck affecting system stability and throughput efficiency. This has also spawned strong demand for clock/timing chips. SiTime's acquisition of Renesas' timing business at a valuation of approximately $3 billion is precisely aimed at this market trend.
03Relevant Domestic Analog Chip Companies Reach a Performance Inflection Point
Benefiting from the dual benefits of global industry recovery and the explosion of AI demand, many domestic related analog chip companies have also handed in report cards of turning losses into profits or achieving high-speed growth.
The 2025 annual performance forecast disclosed by 3PEAK shows that the company expects to achieve an operating income of 2.13 billion to 2.15 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 74.66%-76.3%; net profit attributable to the parent company of 165 million to 184 million RMB, compared to a loss of 197 million RMB in the same period last year; the deducted non-recurring net profit is expected to be 105 million to 126 million RMB, compared to a loss of 281 million RMB in the same period last year. The reason for the performance change is that in 2025, the company's business continued to grow in multiple markets such as automobiles, AI servers, optical modules, new energy (photovoltaic inversion, energy storage, etc.), power modules, power grids, industrial control, test and measurement, and home appliances. According to previous disclosures by 3PEAK, the company has already laid out in the server market and has currently mass-produced a variety of products including Op-Amps (Operational Amplifiers), AFE, I3C, I2C, LDO, current sensing, and hot-swap controllers. The above products have a wide range of applications and can be applied to various general-purpose servers and AI servers. In the first half of 2025, the company newly mass-produced a variety of products for server power supply applications, including Op-Amps, comparators, drivers, auxiliary power supplies, current sensing, DCDC converters, etc., mainly applied to AI servers, further enriching the product matrix.
NOVOSENSE announced that the company expects to achieve an operating income of 3.3 billion to 3.4 billion RMB in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 68.34% to 73.45%; the net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company is -250 million to -200 million RMB, and the loss narrowed by 153 million to 203 million RMB compared with the previous year. NOVOSENSE stated that the demand for server power supplies from customers is growing rapidly driven by AI. In addition, the server power supply market brought by the development of AI computing centers has extremely high requirements for power density. GaN has become the optimal choice for high power density, and NOVOSENSE will actively expand its layout in this field.
Bright Power Semiconductor has also achieved a major breakthrough in performance. It is expected to achieve an operating income of about 1.57 billion RMB in 2025, an increase of 66.3823 million RMB compared with the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of about 4.41%; the net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company is about 36 million RMB, an increase of 69.0513 million RMB compared with the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of about 208.92%; the net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses is about 18 million RMB, an increase of 27.0095 million RMB compared with the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of about 299.79%. Bright Power Semiconductor stated that the performance improvement is mainly due to the continuous promotion of the product structure optimization strategy. The revenue of motor control driver chips and high-performance computing power supply chips and their proportion in the company's overall revenue have increased year-on-year, driving the enhancement of the company's overall profitability.
Chipown has also handed in a report card of steady growth. It is expected to achieve an operating income of about 1.14 billion RMB in 2025, an increase of 175 million RMB compared with the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of about 18%; the net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company is about 185 million RMB, an increase of 73.67 million RMB compared with the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of about 66%; the net profit after deducting non-recurring gains and losses is about 55 million RMB, a decrease of 18.12 million RMB compared with the same period last year, a year-on-year decrease of about 25%. Chipown stated that in 2025, the company launched 12 core new products for the AI computing energy field, comprehensively completing the full-link layout from primary power supply, secondary power supply to tertiary power supply for servers. Among them, high-performance power products such as 1700V SiC auxiliary power supply, isolated drivers, SiC/GaN drivers, megahertz open-loop DCX controllers, fully integrated digital hard-switching full-bridge controllers, 8/12/16 multiphase VRMs, 70/90A Cu-Clip DrMOS, eFuse, and PoL for 800V HVDC systems can meet the requirements of high-computing-power servers for power conversion efficiency, stability, and miniaturization.
04Hidden Concerns Emerge: Small and Medium-Sized Analog Chip Companies Encounter Capacity Bottlenecks
However, behind the prosperous scene of the overall improvement of the industry, a hidden crisis is quietly emerging: for many small and medium-sized analog chip companies, the shortage of wafer capacity has become a bottleneck restricting their development. Some practitioners said that small analog chip companies currently cannot get wafer capacity.
Currently, the analog chip industry generally uses 8-inch wafers for production, and in the next 2-3 years, the tight capacity of 8-inch wafers will continue to be an industry pain point. The reasons are as follows:
First, overseas 8-inch wafer fabs, impacted by domestic market competition, have seen their profit margins significantly compressed, and have successively started to shut down since 2025. Samsung plans to close an 8-inch wafer fab within the year and turn to focus on more profitable 12-inch wafer fabs (used for manufacturing advanced chips); TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is also gradually reducing the number of 8-inch wafer fabs. This trend has become a common phenomenon in the global chip industry. In addition, overseas analog foundry capacity is inherently limited. Tower Semiconductor is the largest manufacturer among them, and DB HiTek and VIS also have some capacity; while overseas analog chip giants such as ADI and Texas Instruments mostly adopt the IDM model, own their own wafer fabs, and these fabs all use special processes for internal use and do not provide foundry services to the outside world.
Second, overseas design companies are turning to domestic wafer fabs for tape-out one after another, further squeezing domestic 8-inch wafer capacity. In particular, European companies are accelerating their layout in the Chinese market, making the already tense supply and demand contradiction of capacity more prominent. This trend is expected to last for 2-3 years.
Domestic major wafer foundries such as SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) and Hua Hong Semiconductor have successively notified customers that they will increase the prices of foundry services for some products, especially 8-inch wafers with mature processes, with an increase of up to 20%. This move also indirectly confirms the current situation of tight capacity. From a global perspective, there has been a long-term lack of new capital expenditure for 8-inch wafer fabs, and the maintenance and operating costs of old equipment continue to rise, resulting in slow growth of effective capacity. The continuous expansion of the supply and demand scissors difference also provides foundries with sufficient room for price negotiation.
Faced with the dilemma of 8-inch wafer capacity shortage, the industry may explore the possibility of shifting to 12-inch wafer capacity. Currently, the technology of several domestic second-tier 12-inch wafer fabs is gradually maturing, and their capacity is more suitable for the mature process production of analog small chips. Although the price per piece of 12-inch wafers is higher, insiders revealed that with almost the same mask price, the difference in the number of dies on wafers of the two sizes completely covers the price difference of a single wafer. Calculated this way, it is a cost-effective business. However, this transformation also has potential risks — companies need to redesign products based on the 12-inch process, which puts forward higher requirements for technological R&D capabilities and capital investment.
In the future, the recovery path of the analog chip industry will still show the characteristics of "coexistence of opportunities and challenges". Only by continuously deepening technological R&D and optimizing capacity layout can domestic enterprises break through bottlenecks in global competition, achieve the leap from "following" to "leading", and promote the industry to enter a higher-quality development stage.