Author: Feng Ning

As of May 2026, the leading players in the analog chip market have already announced two rounds of price hikes.

01 Two Major Analog Leaders Raise Prices Again!

On May 8, a price increase notice from TI (Texas Instruments) circulated in the market. The notice stated: Texas Instruments is about to adjust its product prices. This price adjustment will affect multiple products in our portfolio, and the magnitude of the increase will depend on the specific materials and technologies. The new prices will apply to all orders and shipments effective from July 1, 2026.

Texas Instruments stated that this price increase is driven by the current market environment and rising costs across the broader supply chain.

This marks the third price adjustment by TI over the past year.

The first occurred in August 2025, when TI announced price adjustments for over 60,000 part numbers, with an overall increase of 10%-30%, and even higher for some scarce models. This round of price hikes basically covered the entire product portfolio, including analog chips such as PMICs (Power Management ICs) and signal chain products, as well as embedded processors and logic devices like MCUs (Microcontroller Units) and DSPs.

The second time, TI rolled out its second round of across-the-board price increases starting April 1. This increase ranges from 15% to 85%, potentially covering all customers, and involves multiple core products such as digital isolators, isolated driver ICs, and PMICs.

NXP, another major analog chip maker that also issued a price hike notice in March, recently updated its price adjustments. Market sources indicate that NXP will implement price adjustments starting June 1, 2026. These adjustments are due to evolving inflationary cost pressures, including raw materials, energy, labor, logistics, and supplier inputs.

During the previous wave of price hikes, NXP announced price adjustments for certain products effective April 1, 2026.

In terms of financial performance, TI and NXP have successively released quarterly earnings guidance that exceeded market expectations, reflecting the continued recovery in demand from end markets such as industrial and automotive sectors.

On April 23, TI released its Q1 2026 financial report, with performance comprehensively beating market expectations. The company's Q1 revenue reached $4.83 billion, a 19% year-over-year increase and a 9% quarter-over-quarter increase. By business segment, the analog chip business, as the company's core engine, generated $3.924 billion in revenue in Q1, up 22% year-over-year; the embedded processing business (including MCU chips) generated $723 million in revenue, up 12% year-over-year, with operating profit surging 205% year-over-year.

This earnings explosion marks that the recovery of the semiconductor industry is spreading from AI computing infrastructure to broader industrial and automotive fields. The boom in AI data center construction has not only driven demand for digital chip giants like NVIDIA and AMD but is also taking analog demand (especially for power management and signal chains) "to the next level."

On April 28, NXP released its Q1 2026 financial report. The company's Q1 revenue was $3.181 billion, a 12% year-over-year increase, exceeding analysts' expectations of $3.15 billion; all end markets saw comprehensive growth, with the industrial and IoT (Internet of Things) business growing by 24%, which was the most prominent. NXP expects Q2 revenue to be in the range of $3.35 billion to $3.55 billion, with a median year-over-year growth rate of about 18%, also exceeding analysts' expectations of $3.27 billion.

02 Who Is Rewriting the Cycle of Analog Chips?

From the demand side, historically, discussions on the analog chip cycle rarely omit a string of keywords: automotive, industrial automation, and consumer electronics. These account for the majority of demand, giving the cyclical recovery of analog chips a highly predictable nature.

However, AI data centers are breaking this inertia.

Morgan Stanley's latest research suggests that the fundamentals of analog chips are moving from an "L-shaped bottom" toward recovery: channel inventory is leaner, pricing pressures have eased, and the supply of mature process and power-related products is experiencing selective tightness.

The scaled deployment of GPU computing clusters is not only a demand driver for advanced processes but also an incremental transformer in the fields of power management and signal chains. Behind a high-density computing board are multi-phase controllers, DrMOS, hot-swap controllers, voltage regulator modules, as well as coordinated optical interconnects and memory interface chips—all of which represent incremental space for analog devices.

From a deeper market driver perspective, the true structural variables are concentrated in the upgrade of AI rack power architectures. Morgan Stanley emphasized in its report that over the next 12 to 24 months, changes in AI rack power architectures will become one of the most critical structural variables in the analog chip sector. Its focus is mainly on two dimensions: first, the generational technological leap brought by the evolution of AI rack power architectures toward 800V; second, the synergistic penetration of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) and digital power management solutions in high-power-density clusters. The report predicts that the power semiconductor content in each Rubin Ultra AI rack may exceed $20,000.

Automotive electrification and industrial automation are also becoming core growth engines parallel to AI.

The high penetration of NEVs (New Energy Vehicles), coupled with the upgrade of high-voltage platforms, has significantly increased the usage and value of analog chips per vehicle, boosting sustained demand for automotive-grade PMICs, signal chains, and isolation chips. According to IHS and Melexis, across all vehicle classes from A to E, electrification has substantially increased the demand for analog chips per vehicle. For example, the analog chip usage in Class A ICEs is about 100 units, while the demand for Class A BEVs is as high as over 350 units; in Class B vehicles, the per-vehicle analog chip usage increases from 160 units for ICEs to nearly 400 units for BEVs, and for Class E BEVs, the usage exceeds 650 units.

On the industrial side, with the recovery of manufacturing prosperity and the upgrade of intelligent manufacturing and photovoltaic energy storage, orders in fields such as industrial control, motor drive, and sensor signal conditioning are also steadily recovering, and the rigid demand continues to be unleashed.

From the supply side and supply logic perspective, analog chips and digital chips have distinctly different technological development paths. The performance improvement of digital chips is highly bound to the iteration of advanced processes, with core competition focusing on continuous breakthroughs in nanometer-level processes; whereas analog chips do not blindly pursue extreme advanced processes, have higher tolerance for process nodes, and focus more on device stability, anti-interference performance, and parameter matching accuracy in R&D and mass production.

For this very reason, the mass production of analog chips in the industry generally relies on 8-inch mature wafer production lines as the core carrier, without the need to occupy expensive advanced process capacity. Relying solely on 8-inch mature processes can cover the mass production requirements for the vast majority of application scenarios such as automotive, industrial control, and consumer electronics.

However, over the past two years, the prices of upstream wafer substrates and packaging materials have continued to rise, coupled with frequent fluctuations in global energy prices. The cost pressure on leading foundries and OSAT companies in mature processes has sharply increased. They could only adjust prices by passing the costs down the supply chain, which has also become the direct trigger forcing analog chip manufacturers to follow suit with price adjustments.

Data from TrendForce shows that since the second half of 2025, the two major wafer foundry leaders, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) and Samsung, have continuously reduced their 8-inch mature process capacity. Meanwhile, the explosive growth of AI servers and edge computing devices has driven a substantial surge in demand for PMICs and power devices. In 2026, the average capacity utilization rate of 8-inch capacity among the world's top ten wafer foundries has rebounded to nearly 90%.

At the market level, 8-inch foundry prices have stopped falling and rebounded; affected by TSMC's production cut plans, 12-inch mature processes are also seeing expectations of order transfers, and second-tier foundries are even planning to raise quotes again in the second half of 2026.

The capacity side also shows a contracting trend: in 2025, the global total 8-inch wafer capacity declined by 0.3% year-over-year, entering negative growth for the first time. Although manufacturers such as SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) and Vanguard International Semiconductor are slightly expanding capacity in 2026, the scale of new capacity is far from sufficient to offset the production cuts by leading giants. The total 8-inch capacity for the year is expected to drop by another 2.4% year-over-year, and the tight supply pattern will last at least until the first half of 2027.

This structural capacity exit has completely reversed the industry situation of the past two years, which was characterized by overcapacity in mature processes and continuously declining foundry prices.

03 Domestic Analog Chip Companies: Who Will Seize the Dividends?

SG Micro achieved operating revenue of 1.098 billion RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 39.08%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 124 million RMB, a year-over-year increase of 106.96%.

Awinic achieved operating revenue of 646 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 1.02%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 51.0547 million RMB, a year-over-year decrease of 20.32%.

Novosense achieved operating revenue of 1.141 billion RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 59.17%, with a net loss attributable to shareholders of 35.7365 million RMB.

Joulwatt achieved operating revenue of 765 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 44.8%, with a net loss attributable to shareholders of 276 million RMB, a year-over-year decrease of 143.54%.

Bright Power Semiconductor achieved operating revenue of 609 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 86.35%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 36.7593 million RMB, compared to a loss of 6.6790 million RMB in the same period last year, achieving a turnaround from loss to profit year-over-year.

3peak achieved operating revenue of 702 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 66.5%, with a net profit attributable to shareholders of 105 million RMB, a year-over-year increase of 577.25%.

Shanghai Belling achieved operating revenue of 604 million RMB in Q1 2026, a 28.93% increase from 469 million RMB in the same period last year, achieving a substantial expansion in revenue scale.

Chipown achieved operating revenue of 294 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year decrease of 2.57%; the net profit attributable to shareholders was 13.7242 million RMB, a year-over-year decrease of 66.59%.

Leadin Micro achieved operating revenue of 206 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 25.71%; however, the net loss attributable to shareholders was 1.3930 million RMB, turning from profit to loss year-over-year.

Biyiwei achieved operating revenue of 205 million RMB in Q1 2026, a year-over-year increase of 66.38%, with a net profit attributable to shareholders of 13.630 million RMB, a year-over-year increase of 203.79%.

The financial reports of the above manufacturers also reveal that domestic analog chips are ushering in a recovery, but it is not a universal boom. Relying on the gap in technological strength, coupled with differences in downstream market demand, the industry has already quietly walked out of a clear divergence. Companies that have completed early layouts in high-barrier products such as automotive-grade, signal chains, isolation, and drivers can simultaneously enjoy the triple dividends of "demand volume expansion + price increase elasticity + domestic substitution"; while companies still trapped in the red ocean of consumer electronics (low-end PMICs, LED drivers, audio power amplifiers), even if the industry recovers, cannot translate revenue into profit due to the lack of pricing power and customer stickiness.

In this round of analog chip price hike wave, domestic manufacturers are ushering in three core opportunities.

First is the opportunity for price dividends. With overseas giants comprehensively raising prices and tightening supply, domestic enterprises are following suit to increase product prices, quickly repairing industry gross margins and reversing the previous situation of low profitability due to low-price competition.

Second is the opportunity for order transfer. With the lead time of overseas chips significantly extended, downstream automotive, industrial control, and computing power customers are accelerating the adoption of domestic solutions out of supply chain security considerations, and the market space for general-purpose analog chips continues to expand.

Third is the opportunity for high-end breakthroughs. The explosion of the NEV and AI computing power industries has driven a surge in demand for high value-added chips such as automotive-grade, industrial-grade, and high-speed signal chains. Local enterprises are leveraging market demand to accelerate the completion of automotive-grade certifications, making up for high-end product layouts, relying on local supply chain advantages to deeply cultivate core customers, and leveraging the industry's upward cycle to advance from low-end volume to high-end markets, comprehensively enhancing market discourse power and industrial competitiveness.