Recently, "Expert Insights on Third-Generation Semiconductors" has noted that SiC price hikes have become a hot topic in the industry. This round of price increases is no coincidence, but an inevitable result of multiple pressures on both supply and demand, including the continuous rise in upstream wafer foundry costs, bulk metals like copper and tin, and packaging auxiliary materials.
Currently, multiple manufacturers have explicitly raised SiC product prices, and the pricing signals are continuously transmitting across the upstream and downstream of the industry chain. However, not all companies have chosen to follow suit, presenting a differentiated market landscape of "partial price hikes and partial wait-and-see."
Why does the SiC industry need price hikes? Why are some companies holding their ground? This article will analyze the driving forces and industry logic behind this round of price hikes from the perspective of each link in the industry chain.
SiC Price Hike Spreads Across the Entire Chain: Domestic and International Manufacturers Follow Suit
Since 2025, the power semiconductor industry has entered a clear upward pricing cycle. On the one hand, the industry has long faced the pressure of structural cost increases; on the other hand, downstream demand centered on the AIDC (Artificial Intelligence Data Center) sector has erupted, leading to a capacity gap in the industry and an increasingly prominent supply-demand mismatch.
Against this backdrop, mainstream domestic and international power semiconductor manufacturers have initiated price adjustments, with the price hikes comprehensively covering core categories such as MOSFET, IGBT, and SiC. Among them, the price hike trend for SiC products has initially emerged, and multiple upstream and downstream enterprises have intensively followed up with price adjustments, reflecting three major signs.
First, domestic SiC manufacturers initiated the price adjustments. In this round of price hikes, leading domestic SiC and power semiconductor manufacturers have implemented pricing policies. Multiple companies have successively issued price hike announcements, with concentrated adjustment times and clear, explicit price increase margins.
On June 26, StarPower Semiconductor issued a price adjustment notice, announcing a price increase for its power semiconductor modules and discrete device products, including IGBT and SiC MOSFET, with price increases starting at 15% overall. On July 13, BASiC Semiconductor announced the initiation of product price adjustments, making moderate adjustments to the sales prices of some products, with a maximum expected price hike capped at 25%. On July 28, Yuquan Semiconductor followed suit again, announcing price adjustments for its full range of IGBT modules, SiC power modules, and other products starting from August 1.
In addition to the aforementioned companies, listed manufacturers such as CR Micro (China Resources Microelectronics), Yangjie Technology, and Silan Microelectronics have announced price adjustments across all their product line businesses, which include SiC businesses and products, with price adjustment ranges starting from 10% to 15%. Thus, it can be seen that a tiered price‑hike landscape has taken shape among domestic SiC players.
Second, international giants have raised prices multiple times within the year. This round of price hikes is not unique to the domestic market; overseas leading semiconductor manufacturers are also revising their pricing schedules upward and have implemented multiple price adjustments this year. According to reports from Yicai and other media, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, and onsemi have all adjusted prices twice this year, making price adjustments for more semiconductor products, with the second round of price adjustments officially implemented in July this year.
In an interview, David Pan, Global Senior Vice President and President of Greater China at Infineon, revealed that this price hike is mainly due to rising costs, such as the increase in raw material prices. Meanwhile, the strong demand for power semiconductors is largely driven by AI (Artificial Intelligence). For example, in AI servers adopting an 800V architecture, the SiC device count per unit can rise from 10 to more than 24.
Finally, the price hike wave is spreading from upstream substrates to downstream terminals, with a significant transmission effect across the industry chain. This round of the SiC wave is not limited to the device segment but continues to transmit along the upstream and downstream of the industry chain. From upstream substrate materials to downstream terminal application products, the entire chain has experienced certain price hike fluctuations.
According to research by "Expert Insights on Third-Generation Semiconductors", in the second quarter of this year, the price of 6-inch SiC substrates has risen by about 10% compared to the end of last year. It is expected that the increase will further expand in the second half of the year, and leading substrate enterprises are already making targeted price hikes. Meanwhile, some overseas SiC module suppliers have implemented “hidden price hikes” by adjusting supply-demand dynamics, adjusting the supply and demand rhythm by prolonging order delivery times and indirectly raising the actual procurement costs for customers.
According to reports from Economic Observer and other media, leading charging module enterprises such as UU Green Power, Shanghai Anshibo, Tonghe Electronic Technology, and Guangdong Yineng Era have all issued price hike letters. They stated that since the first half of 2026, costs such as SiC chips have risen, with the increase far exceeding expectations. To ensure continuous and stable supply, they plan to raise prices for all product lines by 15%.
In summary, the price hike of SiC has become a substantial industrial phenomenon. Driven by both cost and demand, the SiC industry will enter a new pricing measurement cycle.
Why Does SiC Need Price Hikes? Enterprises Need to Return to Reasonable Profits
In fact, the price hike of SiC is not groundless. According to research data from Expert Insights Research, 6‑inch conductive substrate prices fell sharply in 2024 and 2025 and have now neared manufacturers’ cost floors. Various mainstream SiC MOSFET devices have also seen a decrease of 60% to 75% in the past two years.
Although SiC devices have significantly narrowed the price gap with IGBTs, the rapid price drop has exerted considerable profit pressure on manufacturers. SiC is not without reasons for price hikes; on the contrary, for manufacturers that have been in a long-term price decline, a moderate rebound is a normal requirement for business development.
Focusing on enterprises in the four core tracks of substrates, epitaxy, devices, and modules, their business data trends fully confirm the severe cyclical fluctuations in the industry in recent years: average selling prices across every segment have fallen sharply, gross profit margins have continued to narrow, and operational pressure has risen accordingly.
First, the selling prices of substrate, epitaxy, device, and module products have all dropped significantly: Company A (Substrate): From 2023 to 2025, the cumulative decrease in the average selling price of 6-inch substrates exceeded 60%; the cumulative decrease in the average selling price of 8-inch substrates was nearly 80%. Company B (Epitaxy): From 2022 to the third quarter of 2025, the average selling prices of both 6-inch and 8-inch epitaxial wafers cumulatively decreased by about 66%. Company C (Device): From 2023 to 2024, the average selling price of SiC devices decreased by about 35%, followed by a slight rebound in 2025. Company D (Module): From 2023 to 2025, the cumulative decrease in the average selling price of SiC modules reached 73.5%, including a drop of more than 70% between 2024 and 2025 alone.
Second, on the flip side of the price drop is the simultaneous narrowing of the gross profit margin space: Company A (Substrate): From 2023 to 2025, the gross profit margin continued to decline, and gross margins for its 6‑inch and 8‑inch substrate products turned negative. Company B (Epitaxy): From 2023 to the third quarter of 2025, the gross profit margins of epitaxial wafer sales and foundry services declined simultaneously, with the foundry gross profit margin dropping by as much as over 80%. Company C (Device): From 2023 to 2025, gross margin for its SiC device business swung from positive to negative and back again, and still sits below 1%. Company D (Module): From 2023 to 2025, the gross profit margin of the SiC power module business remained continuously negative.
Combining the business data of these four SiC enterprises, when prices continue to operate near the cost line and some links fall into losses, the industry's R&D investment, capacity expansion, and supply chain stability all face practical pressures. Against this backdrop, some manufacturers are pushing for price hikes not out of opportunism, but to repair margins eroded by prior excessive price cuts.
What the SiC industry needs is not to avoid price hikes, but to find a balance between reasonable profits and market expansion—upstream enterprises need profits to support technology iteration, and downstream customers need stable supply guarantees. This is not only a price game but also a necessary negotiation for the industry to mature.
Why Don't SiC Manufacturers Raise Prices? The Competitive Landscape Remains Severe
Overall, in this round of price hikes, SiC appears relatively "quiet." At the public level, voices for SiC price hikes are not common. The mainstream narrative in the market remains that SiC is still reducing costs, still onboarding customers, and still fighting a price war with IGBTs. Why is it difficult for SiC to catch this express train of price hikes? There are multiple intertwined factors behind it.
First, SiC has yet to fully overcome its cost-performance gap. Currently, the price of SiC devices is still higher than that of silicon-based IGBTs of the same specifications, and large-scale substitution is highly concentrated in high-value scenarios such as automotive main drives. In fields more sensitive to prices, such as photovoltaic inverters, energy storage converters, and industrial power supplies, customers are less willing to pay the SiC premium.
Second, SiC is in a critical window period for "boundary-breaking introduction," but downstream customers are also under tremendous cost pressure. Facing successive price hike letters, customers in automotive, photovoltaic and energy storage, and power supply sectors are bearing considerable operational pressure. If SiC enterprises choose to follow the trend and raise prices, it may delay the introduction process of SiC devices.
The chairman of a domestic SiC enterprise recently stated that the performance advantages of SiC have long been recognized by the industry, and its core limitation has always been cost. He believes that price hikes might deliver short-term profits yet slow SiC’s substitution of silicon devices and compress the growth space of the entire industry.
He noted that the higher the prices of silicon-based devices rise, the larger the substitution window for SiC. Downstream customers can take the opportunity of this round of price adjustments to boldly verify and introduce SiC solutions, offsetting the pressure of raw material price hikes through technological upgrades.
Furthermore, competition in the SiC track is becoming increasingly fierce, and some manufacturers worry that hasty price hikes will lead customers to choose alternative suppliers. Currently, the number of players in the SiC track is increasing, and multiple domestic and international manufacturers have achieved stable mass production, with the performance gap narrowing sharply. For downstream customers, the technical barriers and time costs of switching suppliers have been significantly reduced. Unilaterally raising prices is equivalent to voluntarily giving up ground on the battlefield.
Finally, the current core strategy for most SiC enterprises is to seize market share, so they choose not to raise prices in exchange for development space. Some enterprises have explicitly stated that in categories such as IGBT and MOSFET, they are more focused on pursuing market share rather than simply raising prices.
From the perspective of industrial development, the "difficulty in raising prices" for SiC is also a normal phenomenon, reflecting that the industry is stepping from the initial explosive period into a cyclical test period—the market has not consolidated into an oligopoly, but presents a fully competitive situation of "a hundred flowers blooming and heroes competing." Players in various fields show their abilities in technology routes, capacity layout, and customer strategies. The transparency and differentiation of prices coexist, which is inherently a necessary stage for an emerging industry to mature.
Expert Insights Summary
In summary, SiC is not without reasons for price hikes—upstream costs, tight supply and demand relations, and continuous capital expenditures all urgently require reasonable prices to support the healthy development of the industry. For the SiC industry, the true moat has never been short-term price fluctuations, but technological cost reduction achieved through the synergy of the entire industry chain.
From the size leap from 6-inch to 8-inch to the cost optimization from substrates to modules, it is not difficult to find that the cost-performance advantage of SiC is gradually highlighting. In the future, the competitiveness of SiC relies on truly irreplaceable value. This is a track for long-distance runners, competing not only in endurance but also in determination.