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Recent interviews with various sources reveal that the PCB industry has significantly improved compared to the same period last year, especially for high-end products, which are in high demand. An executive from a company disclosed that the market for BT substrates is recovering, with full orders and price increases. Benefiting from hardware upgrades in AI servers and high-speed switches, categories such as high-layer boards and advanced HDI PCBs are becoming popular, with rising prices. However, due to technical barriers, there is a short-term supply-demand gap for high-end products.High-end PCBs are showing tremendous demand potential. According to Prismark data, the global PCB market size is expected to grow by 6.8% year-on-year in Q1 2025, with demand for advanced HDI boards and high-layer boards (over 18 layers) growing at rates of 14.2% and 18.5%, respectively.Analysts predict that driven by the development of industries such as AI, the global PCB market value is expected to reach $94.661 billion by 2029, with AI servers and HPC systems becoming significant driving forces for the development of low-loss high-layer boards and HDI boards.谢书勤, Executive Director of the Greater China region at Sullivan, stated in an interview with Caixin that the hardware upgrades of AI servers are driving a surge in demand for high-end PCBs. Taking NVIDIA’s AI servers as an example, their core modules (such as UBB and OAM acceleration boards) require high-layer boards, with the PCB value per unit significantly higher than that of traditional servers. The global shipment of AI servers has increased from 500,000 units in 2020 to 2 million units in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 45.2%, directly boosting the demand for high-layer and HDI boards.谢书勤 further added, “At the same time, the PCIe 6.0 protocol requires PCBs to support high-speed transmission rates, necessitating the use of ultra-low-loss materials, which further raises the technical barriers and costs. On the supply side, there are capacity bottlenecks; firstly, technical barriers restrict high-end products that require high-precision lamination, laser drilling, and other processes, with only a few manufacturers globally able to provide them, leading to a short-term supply-demand gap for high-end products.”In this context, companies specializing in PCB manufacturing consumables are accelerating their projects. For instance, Zhongtung High-tech (000657.SZ) plans to invest 178 million yuan to implement a project for intelligent manufacturing of 140 million micro-drills for PCBs. Dingtai High-tech plans to accelerate the construction progress of its micro-drill needle investment project to expand capacity.Domestic manufacturers are also actively competing in the production capacity of high-layer boards and HDI PCBs.According to recent announcements and investor activity records, Dongshan Precision (002384.SZ) plans to invest no more than $1 billion to enhance its high-end PCB projects to meet the medium- to long-term demand for high-end PCBs in emerging scenarios such as high-speed computing servers and artificial intelligence; Huadian Co. has planned to invest approximately 4.3 billion yuan in a new high-end PCB expansion project for AI chips, which has already started construction in late June; Chongda Technology (002815.SZ) is planning to utilize a vacant piece of land in Jiangmen to build a new HDI factory to further enrich HDI capacity.Pengding Holdings stated during an institutional survey that the company places great importance on the development prospects in the AI server field, currently having relevant production capacity in Huai’an, China, and Thailand. The first phase of the Thailand park is undergoing customer certification and sample testing, with small-scale production expected in the second half of the year.“In the medium to long term, as production capacity in Southeast Asia is released and new production lines for high-frequency copper-clad laminates are put into operation, the supply-demand conflict may ease. However, continuous technological iterations create new demands, such as Intel’s next-generation Birch Stream platform requiring more advanced PCB products, making R&D reserves and production capacity flexibility key to competition,” analyzed 谢书勤.Currently, the demand for high-end PCBs is experiencing explosive growth driven by AI computing power, but with more PCB manufacturers announcing expansion plans, there are concerns about whether the industry will face challenges such as overcapacity in the future.“Only a few manufacturers globally have stable mass production capabilities, and technical barriers make it difficult to fill the demand gap in the short term.” In the view of 谢书勤, policy regulation is guiding production capacity towards high-quality fields, strictly controlling the expansion of inefficient capacity while strengthening technical barriers, requiring new projects to support the PCIe 6.0 protocol and advanced thermal design, and incorporating energy consumption per unit of output into audits to promote green manufacturing. This precise regulation encourages leading manufacturers to expand production more rationally. Only companies that accurately seize the technological high ground can reap long-term benefits during the expansion cycle.（Caixin）
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