Data appendix
The indicator set with its sources, the source registers, the licences of every kind of material and the formats of the edition.
Contents
- ·Edition home
- ·Executive summary
- 1AI compute is physical infrastructure built on a few chips and a few places
- 2Key findings
- 3Systems and sectors at baseline
- 4Risks and capability
- 5Compute build-out meets local power, water and packaging limits
- 6Readings from the other desks
- 7The 2027 agenda
- 8Systems in depth
- AMethodology
- BData appendix
- CReferences and record
- ·Complete edition, for print
B.1The indicator set
| Indicator | Value | Unit | Year | State | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global semiconductor sales | 791.7 | USD billion | 2025 | Reported | 8 |
| Growth in global sales | 25.6 | % | 2025 | Reported | 8 |
| Logic sales | 301.9 | USD billion | 2025 | Reported | 8 |
| Memory sales | 223.1 | USD billion | 2025 | Reported | 8 |
| Equipment billings | 135.1 | USD billion | 2025 | Reported | 9 |
| Equipment billings, China | 49.3 | USD billion | 2025 | Reported | 9 |
| Equipment billings, Taiwan | 31.5 | USD billion | 2025 | Reported | 9 |
| AI supercomputer performance doubling time | 9 | months | 2019 to 2025 | Reported | 1 |
| Power need of largest system, March 2025 | 300 | MW | 2025 | Reported | 1 |
| Training compute growth | ≈4 | times per year | 2024 | Reported | 3 |
| US data centre electricity use | 176 | TWh | 2023 | Reported | 15 |
| US data centre projection, low | 325 | TWh | 2028 | Scenario | 15 |
| US data centre projection, high | 580 | TWh | 2028 | Scenario | 15 |
| CHIPS and Science Act programmes | 50 | USD billion | 2026 | Reported | 44 |
| Chips found in one vendor GPU, vendor claim | 208 | billion transistors | 2026 | Reported | 19 |
| Water use of one Arizona fab, company figure | 5,300 | acre-feet per year | 2026 | Reported | 23 |
B.2Global source register
The governed source set behind this edition. Each source keeps its authority, coverage, cadence and role; categories describe origin, not truth.
Domains bound by the register
- INF
- AIC
- FIN
- ENE
- TRD
- WAT
- MIN
- CLI
- DAT
- HLT
| Source | Category | Coverage | Period | Cadence | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI supercomputer preprint1 | preprint server | global dataset | 2025 | one-off | compute trends |
| Epoch AI report3 | research organisation | global | 2024 | one-off | limits to 2030 |
| SIA release8 | industry association | global | 2025 | annual | sales |
| Trade report of SEMI data9 | trade press | global | 2025 | annual | equipment |
| NIST CHIPS R&D programmes page11 | national agency | US | 2026 | continuous | programmes |
| European Commission page12 | EU institution | EU | 2026 | continuous | policy |
| BIS page13 | national agency | US | 2026 | continuous | export controls |
| Berkeley Lab report15 | national laboratory | US | 2023 to 2024 | periodic | energy |
| IEA Energy and AI24 | intergovernmental agency | global | 2024 | periodic | energy |
| TrendForce and press222728 | market research and press | global | 2025 | periodic | foundry share |
B.3Regional reading, semiconductor and compute across ten clusters
Regional plates follow with the regional editions. This page gives the regional reading of semiconductor and compute infrastructure in table form and ranks no region.
| Region | Principal hazards | Systems most exposed | Baseline evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | federal subsidy programme; large AI supercomputer share | compute, power | NIST44; preprint1; Berkeley Lab15 |
| South America | early programmes; compute demand | power | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Europe | EU Chips Act and second proposal | fabrication policy | European Commission12 |
| Eurasia | export-control exposure | trade | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Middle East and North Africa | licensing and compute investment; export-control easing noted | trade, power | BIS page13 |
| Africa | skills and access | workforce | regional evidence (not bound) |
| South Asia | national semiconductor mission | fabrication policy | programme listing42 |
| East Asia | fabrication and equipment spending; national programmes | fabrication, equipment | trade report9; press2122 |
| ASEAN | packaging and assembly partners | supply | regional evidence (not bound) |
| Oceania-Pacific | research programmes | research | regional evidence (not bound) |
B.4Cluster card: advanced fabrication in East Asia
- fabrication
- equipment
- foundry
- single cluster
- Systems in view
- foundry fabrication, equipment purchases, packaging, memory
- Defining events
- equipment spending in Taiwan up 90% in 20259
- Couplings
- FIN → INF equipment; TRD → INF controls
- Capability evidence
- new plants announced under national programmes441221
- Gaps
- packaging capacity; plant power and water use
- Agenda items
- Q-02 · Q-03
China, Taiwan and Korea took about 79% of 2025 equipment billings, a derivation from a trade report of SEMI data [9].
SUPPLY
Equipment concentration
Press reports give the largest foundry nearly 70% of the global foundry market in 2025; the figure is secondary [22].
MARKET
One large foundry
Programmes in the United States, the EU and Japan fund new capacity. Delivered output is not documented here [44] [12] [21].
RESPONSE
New plants elsewhere
B.5How countries appear in the semiconductor and compute edition
Countries enter the semiconductor edition through the readiness chapters of their own national editions, on one card grammar. They are read against peer distributions and thresholds, never ranked.
| Card field | What it shows | Source |
|---|---|---|
| WEFH+B state | each core system against peer distribution bands | national edition |
| Couplings | the national dependency matrix | national edition |
| Risk objects | the national risk portfolio | national edition |
| Capability rungs | the national capability ladder | national edition |
| Evidence age | oldest and newest source dates | national source register |
Editions in the 2026 Baseline programme
26national
countries and unions
10regional
clusters
16global
flagship and sector
20frontier
technology reports
How to read a country card
- Each system is shown against the distribution of its peers, with thresholds where they exist
- Couplings and risk objects come from the country’s own national edition
- Capability rungs record evidence, not a judgement of institutions
- Evidence age is printed, so older national data are visible as such
| Wave | Countries and unions | State |
|---|---|---|
| W0 | Canada | ISSUED |
| W1 | United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, European Union, Switzerland | PLANNED |
| W2 | Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Türkiye, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, African Union, India, China, Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia | PLANNED |
B.6Licences
| Material | Licence |
|---|---|
| Text | CC BY 4.0 |
| Data | on the licence of each source; Nexus tables CC BY 4.0 |
| Figures | Nexus figures CC BY 4.0; third-party as credited |
| Maps | boundary source and licence printed on each plate |
| Metadata | CC0 1.0, as Zenodo publishes it |
| Third-party data, figures and text | The source’s own licence, credited where it is used; never relicensed |
| Nexus-authored text, tables and figures: CC BY 4.0 (SPDX CC-BY-4.0). Map plates print their boundary source and licence. | |
B.7Formats and provenance
| Format | Kind | State | What it is | Identifier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web edition | HTML | On this site | Draft in stewardship review; every value resolves to its source. | NR-XTECH-SEMICONDUCTORS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 |
| Print edition | At release | A4 portrait · screen, print and archival PDF, signed with the web edition at release. | NR-XTECH-SEMICONDUCTORS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 | |
| Indicator data | CSV · JSON | On this site | 16 indicators with unit, year, status and source; the machine-readable copy ships with the evidence bundle at release. | NR-XTECH-SEMICONDUCTORS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE data release v1 |
| Figures | SVG · PNG | On this site | 4 on the web edition: headline figure, figure 1.3, coupling instrument, capability ladder. | FIG-XTECH-SEMICONDUCTORS-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-* |
| Slides | Not recorded | No slide deck is recorded for this edition. | ||
| Evidence brief | HTML · PDF | Not recorded | No evidence brief is recorded for this edition. | |
| Dataset with DOI | DataCite | At release | Concept and version DOI are minted at deposit; none is recorded yet. |
Provenance
- Edition pack
- The edition’s content pack (JSON), from which the print and web editions are built
- Evidence cut
- DC-XTECH-SEMICONDUCTORS-GLOBAL-2026-B0, closed 30 September 2026
- Reproducibility
- sourced values cited; analytical values reproducible from stated parameters
- Self-check
- 14 of 23 at evidence close; a fail on any item blocks release
- Review
- five passes scheduled before release (in Annex C)
- Publisher of record
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) for the Nexus Consortium
- Corrections
- Registry correction pathway; upheld corrections are published as notices with a new version
Notes
Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references
- 8Semiconductor Industry Association (ed.), Global Annual Semiconductor Sales Increase 25.6% to $791.7 Billion in 2025 (release; WSTS data; logic USD 301.9 billion; memory USD 223.1 billion; regional growth; about USD 1 trillion projected for 2026). Semiconductor Industry Association, Washington. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 9Evertiq (ed.), Semiconductor equipment billings reached $135B in 2025, 9 April 2026, a trade report of a SEMI release (USD 135.06 billion in 2025 against USD 117.14 billion in 2024; regional table); the SEMI page itself returned an access error, so this is a secondary report and weak evidence. Evertiq, Munich. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 1Pilz, K.F., Sanders, J., Rahman, R. and Heim, L., Trends in AI Supercomputers, arXiv:2504.16026, submitted 22 April 2025 (abstract page: 500 systems from 2019 to 2025; performance doubling about every nine months; cost and power doubling about every year; one March 2025 system with about 200,000 chips, USD 7 billion and 300 MW; about 75% of performance in the United States). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 3Sevilla, J. and others, Can AI scaling continue through 2030?, Epoch AI, 20 August 2024 (first 100,000 characters read: about 4 times a year; 1 to 5 GW campuses; about 2e29 FLOP feasible by 2030; power binds first). Epoch AI, San Francisco. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 15US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE Releases New Report Evaluating Increase in Electricity Demand from Data Centers, 20 December 2024 (176 TWh in 2023, about 4.4%; 325 to 580 TWh, about 6.7% to 12%, in 2028). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 44United States Congress, CHIPS and Science Act, Public Law 117-167, enacted 9 August 2022 (text of section 102 on Congress.gov, first 100,000 characters read: the funding lines for sections 9902 and 9906 of Public Law 116-283 by fiscal year 2022 to 2026 sum to USD 39 billion for manufacturing incentives and USD 11 billion for research, USD 50 billion in all; the totals are sums of the listed amounts, not stated in the text). Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 19Nvidia (ed.), Blackwell architecture product page (208 billion transistors per GPU; custom TSMC 4NP process; performance multiples are vendor claims and weak evidence). Nvidia, Santa Clara. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 23AZFamily (ed.), TSMC Arizona expansion could make it Phoenix’s largest water customer, 22 July 2026 (total planned investment USD 265 billion; about 5,300 acre-feet a year for the first fab; 65% reclaimed; goal 90%); local news reporting company figures, weak evidence. Gray Media, Phoenix. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 11NIST (ed.), CHIPS research and development programmes page (National Semiconductor Technology Center, National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, Manufacturing USA institute; undated; no programme amounts). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 12European Commission (ed.), European Chips Act policy page (entered into force 21 September 2023; three pillars; more than EUR 33 billion across 19 State aid decisions; second Chips Act proposed June 2026). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 13US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (ed.), home page and news items (May 2026 guidance on licences for advanced computing items to Country Group D:5 entities; 7 April 2026 extension of the authorised IC designer timeline to 31 December 2026; Section 232 investigation of semiconductor imports listed). BIS, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 24UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI, April 2025 (about 415 TWh of global data centre electricity in 2024, about 1.5% of the total; about 945 TWh in 2030 in the base case; range of 700 to 1,700 TWh in 2035), taken from search-result summaries; the IEA pages returned an access error. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 22Focus Taiwan, Central News Agency (ed.), report of 13 March 2026 on the largest foundry reaching almost 70% of the global foundry market in 2025 (headline and lead only; the rest is behind a paywall); press report, weak evidence. Central News Agency, Taipei. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 27UNVERIFIED, not opened: TrendForce (ed.), 2025 foundry ranking (largest foundry sales about USD 122.5 billion and a share of about 69.9%), taken from press coverage in search results. TrendForce, Taipei. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 28UNVERIFIED, not opened: TSMC (ed.), fourth-quarter 2025 results (about 74% of 2025 wafer revenue from 7 nanometre and smaller nodes against 69% in 2024), taken from press coverage in search results; sources differ on the quarterly share. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Hsinchu. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 42UNVERIFIED, not opened: Government of India, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India Semiconductor Mission, the programme site returned an access error; cited from memory without figures. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
- 21The Register (ed.), Japan’s Rapidus lands $1.7B to chase 2nm chip production by 2027, 27 February 2026 (JPY 267.6 billion round; JPY 100 billion from a METI agency; JPY 167.6 billion from 32 companies); trade press, weak evidence. Situation Publishing, London. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back