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Back-End Equipment: From Volume
Assembly to a Strategic Advanced
Packaging Ecosystem
The semiconductor back-end equipment market enters
2026 in a stronger position. According to Yole Group’s
Status of the Back-End Equipment Industry 2026
report, it is expected to grow to $11.7 billion in 2031, a
4.4% CAGR between 2026 and 2031. Growth, however,
remains uneven across tool categories.
Behind these figures, the nature of the industry is
changing. The back-end equipment supply chain is
shifting from volume assembly to a strategic advanced
packaging ecosystem. AI infrastructure, HBM, chiplets
and high-performance logic are reshaping vendor qualification, partnerships and regional packaging strategies.
Back-end equipment now influences system performance, power efficiency and supply chain resilience.
Growing package complexity is driving supplier diversification, second sourcing and long-term partnerships.
Expansion, digestion, then renewed growth
Yole Group expects equipment revenue to grow from
$8.1 billion in 2025 to $9.5 billion in 2026 and $10.6
billion in 2027. DISCO, ASMPT and Besi led the market
in 2025 (FIGURE 1). After 2027, the market should
enter a short digestion phase in 2028 before resuming
growth toward $11.7 billion by 2031.
This pause reflects the need to absorb significant
AI-related capacity additions made during 2026 and
2027. As advanced packaging, HBM and AI infrastructure capacity come online, customers are expected
to prioritize utilization, yield improvement and productivity before launching another major investment cycle.
Including service and support revenue, the market is
expected to reach $13.3 billion in 2031. This highlights
the importance of installed-base growth and service
activity, even when demand for new tools slows.
AI drives complexity, not volume
The strongest demand drivers come from AI infrastructure: HBM, high-performance logic, larger package
sizes and tighter logic-memory integration. This
cycle differs from a typical semiconductor recovery
because strategic spending is concentrated on package
8 | Wednesday, October 14
Figure 1. Top back-end equipment vendors by 2025
market share. DISCO led the $8.1 billion market with
20.4%, followed by ASMPT at 10% and Besi at 7.1%.
Source: Status of the Back-End Equipment Industry
2026 report, Yole Group.
complexity and AI-driven performance requirements.
Customers are not simply buying more tools. They are
investing in equipment that addresses yield, alignment,
warpage, thermal and interface challenges in increasingly complex packages.
TCB and hybrid bonding: from
tools to process flows
Advanced packaging remains the main supply chain
driver. Thermocompression bonding (TCB) is critical
for HBM scaling and logic-memory integration, and
customers are expanding supplier options rather than
relying on a single equipment path. Hanmi and ASMPT
remain key references, while Hanwha, Kulicke & Soffa
and Besi continue to increase their exposure to HBM and
advanced logic. Competition in die attach and advanced
interconnects is widening among established, emerging
and Chinese suppliers.
Hybrid bonding goes further. It requires coordination
across cleaning, activation, metrology, die placement,
bonding, inspection and materials. The Applied
Materials–Besi collaboration shows that adoption
depends on a qualified process flow rather than a
stand-alone tool. Similar partnerships involving TSMC,
Continued on page 10
Intel, Samsung, SK hynix, Micron,
www.semiconductordigest.com
