The global AI PCB market is expected to reach $5.6 billion by 2025, with technological barriers and capacity shortages reshaping the industry landscape, as Chinese manufacturers ride the wave to the top. “GPU orders are booked until next year, and server manufacturers are scrambling for capacity,” said a production supervisor at a PCB company in Shenzhen, who has been working late into the night every day. “Even with all production lines running, we still can’t meet customer demand.” Behind him, automated equipment is operating at maximum speed, rapidly forming high-end circuit boards under precision instruments. This busy scene is spreading across PCB factories nationwide. According to the latest report from CICC, overseas demand for computing power is high, driving both the volume and price of PCBs to rise, with the market size expanding rapidly. It is expected that the AI PCB market will reach $5.6 billion in 2025 and exceed $10 billion in 2026.
01 The Invisible Battlefield of Computing Power Infrastructure
Global demand for computing power is undergoing systematic expansion. CICC’s report clearly states that GPU and ASIC chips are experiencing significant volume increases, combined with the application of high-frequency and high-speed materials and advanced multi-layer designs, significantly enhancing the value of each board. Tencent’s Q2 2025 financial report provides strong evidence: R&D investment reached 20.25 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17%, while capital expenditure surged 119% to 19.11 billion yuan. Such massive investments highlight the urgent need for computing power infrastructure among tech giants. In the hardware architecture of computing power, PCBs, as the core substrate that carries chips and connects components, are undergoing a reconstruction of technical value. The value of AI server PCBs is 3-5 times that of traditional servers. As the iteration of AI models accelerates, the demand for computing power from training to inference continues to rise, making high-end PCBs the ‘hard currency’ in the AI competition. The CICC analysis team estimates that the total market size for AI-related PCBs will reach $5.6 billion and $10 billion in 2025 and 2026, respectively. This growth is primarily driven by the demand for overseas computing power chips (GPU + ASIC) and network communication devices (switches + optical modules).
02 The Breakthrough Path of Chinese Leaders
Bomatech: High-End Technology Builds a Moat
In the wave of upgrading to high-end in the PCB industry, Bomatech has positioned itself in key tracks with its technological barriers. The company has made breakthroughs in three high-end fields: ceramic substrates (AMB technology), IC substrates, and HDI boards. Its AMB ceramic substrate production capacity has been increased to 200,000 pieces per month, catering to the demand for silicon carbide devices, with prices 20%-30% higher than traditional aluminum substrates. In the IC substrate field, the company has upgraded to FC-BGA technology, entering the supply chain of leading customers like Changxin Storage. Notably, Bomatech’s performance inflection point is attracting attention. Institutions predict that the company’s net profit in 2025 is expected to reach 600-700 million yuan, turning from loss to profit, with growth exceeding 500%. With the production of the Meizhou Chuangxin Manufacturing Park, Hefei project, and Jiangsu Phase II IC substrate production line, the proportion of high-end products is expected to exceed 60%, and gross margin is anticipated to rise from 13.1% to 25%-30%.
Pengding Holdings: Global Layout Seizes Opportunities
As a leader in the PCB industry, Pengding Holdings is accelerating its position in the AI edge innovation wave. The company is entering the AI server market with high-end HDI products, expanding cooperation with cloud server manufacturers on ASIC-related products. In terms of capacity layout, the first phase of Pengding Holdings’ Thailand park has been completed, and customer certification and sampling are underway, with small-scale production expected in the second half of the year; the first phase of the Huai’an San Park project has been put into production, serving high-end fields such as AI servers and optical modules. In the first half of 2025, the company’s revenue from automotive/server boards reached 810 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87.42%, becoming the fastest-growing business segment. Huatai Securities has raised its net profit forecast for Pengding Holdings for 2025-2027 to 4.285 billion, 5.722 billion, and 7.017 billion yuan.
Xunjiexing: Optical Module Track Emerges
Xunjiexing, focusing on niche areas, has made a name for itself in the optical module PCB track. The company’s optical module clients include Foxconn, with products supplied to giants like Microsoft, Google, and Intel. In July this year, the company’s optical module PCB monthly orders exceeded 10 million yuan, and it is expected to reach 20 million yuan per month in the second half of the year. The company currently primarily produces 400G PCBs, with 800G products already sampled, planning to achieve small-scale production by the end of the year. In the robot PCB field, Xunjiexing is also performing well, with single-machine value reaching thousands of yuan, serving leading companies in the industry such as Yushu, Yuejiang, and Xiaopeng. The company expects revenue to reach 700-800 million yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of over 50%.
Shenghong Technology: Scale Advantage Establishes Leading Position
As a leading enterprise in the industry, Shenghong Technology’s net profit in Q1 2025 exceeded 900 million yuan, demonstrating the scale effect of top manufacturers. The company continues to benefit from its leading position in the AI server PCB market (global market share first). However, compared to Bomatech, Shenghong Technology’s products are concentrated in multi-layer boards below 20 layers, while Bomatech’s breakthroughs in higher-end technology fields are expected to capture higher value-added segments in the AI computing power iteration cycle.
03 Technological Leap and Capacity Bottleneck
Material Revolution Leads Technological Upgrades
The core barrier of high-end PCBs lies in materials and processes. As AI computing power hardware evolves towards high density and high bandwidth, reducing dielectric constant and dielectric loss becomes key to breaking transmission bottlenecks. CICC’s research report points out that in the future, AI will continue to iterate on PCB process technology paths, mainly reflected in three aspects: structural integration (CoWoP, substrate-based), functional upgrades (orthogonal backplane replacing copper connections), and material breakthroughs (M9, PTFE, quartz cloth, etc.).
High-End Capacity Gap Continues to Widen
Although domestic PCB manufacturers are accelerating capacity expansion, the efficiency of high-end capacity release will still lag behind the growth rate of demand. CICC’s analysis of the expansion announcements of seven listed companies in A-shares found that a total investment of about 32 billion yuan is planned for PCB capacity expansion. However, due to the long ramp-up cycle of high-end product yields and the immature localization of the Southeast Asian supply chain, the efficiency of capacity release may lag behind the growth rate of demand, and the supply-demand gap is expected to persist in the medium term.
04 New Growth Points in Future Tracks
As AI penetrates into terminal devices, edge-side innovation will open new space in the PCB market. Pengding Holdings is actively laying out in this area, becoming a core supplier for folding phones, AR/VR, and AI glasses with its dynamic bending FPC modules and ultra-long size FPC component technology. 3D content generation technology is expected to become the next explosive point. Tencent’s mixed Yuan 3D model recently released the first artistic-level 3D generation large model, with cumulative community downloads exceeding 2.3 million, widely used in game development, 3D printing, etc., which will generate new PCB demand. In terms of application scenarios, Tencent’s AI application Yuanbao has been deeply integrated into WeChat, QQ, and other scenarios, achieving upgrades in core capabilities such as search, document understanding, and image processing. This deep integration drives users’ reliance on AI tools, thereby stimulating continuous growth in backend computing power demand. In the next two years, the AI PCB market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 80%, with the market size aiming for $10 billion by 2026. In the three major tracks of optical modules, AI servers, and smart terminals, Chinese manufacturers are breaking through technological barriers at an unprecedented speed. Companies like Bomatech and Pengding Holdings, once ‘invisible champions,’ are now riding the wave to the top. As an industry analyst said, “The capacity gap of high-end PCBs is an opportunity window for Chinese manufacturing.” With the arrival of the traditional peak season in the third quarter, these companies holding high-end capacity are set for explosive performance. In today’s heated AI competition, high-end PCBs have become indispensable ‘hard currency’ for tech giants, and Chinese manufacturers are occupying an increasingly critical position in the global supply chain.
Disclaimer: The data in this article is compiled from public information and does not guarantee the completeness and timeliness of the content. All individual stocks and opinions do not constitute investment advice. The analysis conclusions are for reference only. Investing involves risks, and caution is advised! Past performance does not guarantee future returns.