SemiWiki.com - Podcast EP333: A Look at the Broad, Worldwide Impact SEMI Has on the Semiconductor Industry with Ajit Manocha

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Daniel is joined by Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI, the global industry association serving the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing and design supply chain. Throughout his career, Manocha has been a champion of industry collaboration as a critical means of advancing technology for societal and economic prosperity.… Read More

Hello, my name is Daniel Nenny, founder of SemaiWiki, the Open Forum for Semiconductor Professionals. Welcome to the Semiconductor Insiders podcast series. My guest today is Ajit Manosha, president and CEO of Semi, the Global Industry Association, serving a semiconductor and electronics manufacturing and design supply chain. Throughout his career, Minosha has been a champion of industry collaboration as a critical means of advancing technology for societal and economic. economic prosperity, he began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a research scientist and was granted more than a dozen patents related to semiconductor manufacturing processes that served as the foundation for modern microelectronics manufacturing. Welcome to the podcast,

Ajit. Thank you, Daniel. So we've known each other for quite some time, but give our listeners just a little bit of background. And let's start with what brought you to semi. Very interesting background here. Daniel, I think as you mentioned, I started my career in Bell Labs. And in Bell Labs, our slogan was Connect, Collaborate, and Innovate. And that was really part of my DNA, became part of my DNA. But after my 15 years at AT&T Bell Labs, I went to Phillips, Netherlands. I was a C-O-O-Fillips Semiconductor, which became an XP.

in 2006 and I retired from NXP in 2008 got on the few boards including the advisory board of investors of global fundies which led me to while searching for the CEO of Global Fondis I became the search I did that for three years or so and retired again and then the some of the board members of Sammy reached out to me saying Ajit we really need somebody from the industry to lead semi. And when I looked at the semi's mantra, it was also Connect, Collaborate, Innovate, which resonated very well with me from my Bell Labs days.

And I said, okay, you know, serving on few boards, giving back to the industry is one way of, you know, continuing my journey. But working in semi is also basically giving back. back to the industry. So it resonated very well with me. And so nine years ago, I joined Sammy. And here I am at Sammy.

So I think this is really been a good journey for me, been in corporate life for four decades or so, and now Sammy for last nine years. Yeah, that's a great story. I worked with you when you grew at Global Foundries. An amazing career, Ajit. And you know, I do semi-winky, by the way, the same thing to get back to the industry because I've been here more than 40 years as well.

And it's just been so rewarding. And I think right now is probably the one of the most exciting times in semiconductor throughout my career. You know, AI is top of mind for a lot of people in the global semiconductor industry. At the recent semi-industry strategy symposium, industry analysts shared new projections on the industry's path to $1 trillion in annual revenue, which is amazing. Can you tell us about the latest projections and the impact of AI on this rapid growth? Well, I think you said it all, Daniel. AI has become a household name. In fact, there's an AI summit going on in India.

And believe it or not, the youngest speaker, keynote speaker, was a six-year-old kid in India who talked about AI. You know, that boggues my mind. But specific to the question you mentioned, fueling the growth, I mean, I lived that life and since you and I have been in the industry in a long time, and we know that we live the life of feast and famine. And that life has changed to exponential growth. Yes, with some correction here and there because of the geopolitical issues or economical issues.

But AI is really fueling the growth in 2025, year 25, 35, 35% of the chips were AI-enabled chips were manufactured. And right now we're talking about by 2030, it will be more than 50% of the AI-enable chips will be produced. So, AI is definitely fueling the growth. In fact, talking about the growth at ISS, I actually, admitted that I was wrong. I put a stake in the ground in 2017 for the first time that I said our industry will have the revenue of one trillion by 2030. In fact we are reaching one trillion this year so 2026 so I was off by four years but I'm happy to be wrong and in fact the AI revolution is definitely here

to stay and if that's not enough the quantum revolution is brewing around the block and probably that will further accelerate the growth to 20 to 2 trillion by 2035 or so so i think you're right never been a good time in the industry i wish i was starting in the industry now than four decades ago yeah yeah i agree i remember when you said uh one trillion in in 2030 and I agreed because the semiconductor industry is generally a single-digit growth industry, you know, throughout our career. And, you know, there are ebbs and flows, but, you know, it's 5 to 10 percent growth was pretty amazing. But now it's just skyrocketing. And, you know, even how we count the revenue is difficult because it's not just fabulous companies anymore making chips.

The system companies are making chips. You know, Apple is one of the first ones in Tesla and now the hyperscalers are making their own chips. And, you know, I think the $1 trillion annual revenue is going to be very easy this year. And your future predictions will be easy as well since so many companies are creating chips now. But, you know, of course, rapid industry expansion adds pressure on existing challenges such as talent shortages and energy consumption. And this doesn't even factor in, you know, navigating current geopolitical tensions and policy shifts and, you know, all that stuff. So from your perspective, what are the top industry challenges semi is focused on for 2026? Well, Daniel, this industry growth is happening exponentially and very rapidly as we talked about.

But we have really been not very successful in growing the talent pool in the world. What I mean by that is that the STEM education in the US and the Europe, so the Western world, STEM education is not as popular as it used to be three decades ago. In fact, I don't have the exact number, but qualitatively, the STEM education has dropped by factor of 3 from 30 some percent in 90s to around 10 percent as we speak now. Whereas in Asian countries, the STEM education is still very popular, but the number of children to a couple has dropped by more than factor of two. So if you really look at the STEM population is reducing by more than factor of two while industry is growing by more than factor of two. So there's a gap of factor of four. Yes, AI will help with some of the jobs, mostly the administrative jobs, but AI cannot replace technicians in the FABS and so on. When we're talking about $1 trillion industry, we are talking about 150 new fabs coming on board between now and 2030.

And because of AI revolution and the lot of data, the number of data centers is also exponentially growing around the globe. And these data centers, as well as the wafer fabs, are all energy guzzlers. So that's the one big challenge besides talent is the energy crisis. And the third crisis, which probably not too many people are aware of it, because we take this industry for granted that we use a polymeric material under the one category called PFAS, which has probably thousands of different derivatives of PFAS. We use PFAS in multiple process steps, both in front end and in the back end, but also for equipment manufacturing where we use oarings and gaskets, vacuum Cases, they all use PFAS. And the regulators wanted to stop the manufacture of PFAS by 2025 by last year.

And that would have created a massive chaos in the world. If you remember what happened during COVID time and there was a total shutdown of the world and we kept the industry going because of this understanding of the importers of semiconductors also semiconductor and people realize that semiconductor industry is vital for virtually every industry and more importantly for even humanity so we actually started addressing the PFS with the regulators around the globe that do not shut PFS down otherwise will have a massive

massive chaos so three challenges to sum it up talent energy crisis and PF crisis, that's where I think we are very much focused on. I agree completely. You know, I think the good news is that AI is, you know, front page and people are looking to, you know, forward and what it's going to take to be successful, you know, once AI infuses into all of our businesses, all of our lives. And, you know, building these data centers, of course, brings everything front and center, like the energy and everything you've talked about. So, you know, we have billionaires that are working on this. And in order for these billionaires to become trillion, They have to solve these problems.

So it's comforting me that it's out front and everybody knows this and companies like semi and yourself and myself were all talking about it. So I have high hopes. But how exactly is semi working with member companies to address these issues? Well, that's a great question, Daniel. Semi actually did something very unprecedented. actually never has happened in the history. We created a new platform called SIPS.

We stand for semi-international policy summit. The SIF platform was formed comprising of policy makers from the like-minded countries and top 60-70 executives in a closed-door room with the Chatham House rules, no media. And we said, okay, These three topics are so difficult that no single company, no single country, no single CEO can address them.

It requires a massive collaboration of the industry and government. Now, as you know me from my corporate career, I wanted to keep government out of my business. But after looking at these problems, I have come to realization that we need governments to be partner with us to support, all this problem starting with PFAS if regulators were going to shut us down it would have been a

massive disaster and this platform was formed in october of 23 and when we explained to them that semi-industry is very responsible and very accountable when it comes to environmental health and safety we take full responsibility of every material we use we do not contaminate the grounds or air with the PFAS but other industries do yes but if you take actions on the other industries to shut down PFAS the unintended consequences is it will shut down semiconductor industry and will shut down the world that message really resonated very well with the regulators and in that meeting the number two person of EPA she got up on the stage and she said Mr. Minotia we will not shut you down and soon after that European

Union and METI Japan and other policymakers they all accord and the commitment was made that we will not shut you down provided to make Semi makes a commitment that you will bring industry government together along with academia to find the alternate chemistries for PFAS and make this problem as address this problem in a in a comprehensive way and so that was really a starting point of this success of this platform and In this platform, we are addressing three topics, PFS, energy crisis, as well as the talent. There are a lot going on in the talent. I think we have made a lot of progress on all three areas.

Unfortunately, these problems are not going to be addressed or solved in two or three years. These are like five to 10, 15 years horizon. But the good news is this collaboration of industry, academia, and government is working extremely well. We had four meetings so far and the next meeting will be this year in November timeframe somewhere in Europe. That's good to hear. You know, the semi-s symposiums are legendary. I have attended so many of them and so many ideas and so many things have come to fruition from them. So it's very good to hear.

So Ajit, final question. What plans do you have to evolve the platform to continue? to continue to meet industry needs. I mean, it's the tip of the iceberg right now, in my opinion. What's coming next? Well, I think we got a lot to do yet. I mean, as AI is becoming the next big deal,

and regulators haven't really done anything to set regulations on AI, or data sharing, how you handle the data exchange, and also cyber security issues. These are the next big ticket items, which are impacting the industry, or will impact the industry or the humanity. And I know most CEOs are keeping the, keeping themselves awake on these topics.

So as of 26, we're adding two more topics on our platform, AI data and cybersecurity. And good news is that on the platform, we mentioned about like-minded countries, which are mostly the big hubs of a semiconductor, But now the United Nations wants to join the platform and because United Nations has a big focus on AI and there will be many more like-minded countries joining our platform at SIFS 2.0 this year. The meeting will be either in Geneva or Brussels or Vienna with the United Nations as a co-host with us along with European Union. So again, this platform will grow and we're going to nurture the platform and make sure that we address these, the most daunting challenges of the industry.

And hence, we create the value for our industry by addressing these things collectively. And that's where it goes back to my roots of collaboration. That's the word I learned as part of my DNA in my Bell Labs. And that is really the mantra or the middle name of Sammy, Connect, Collaboration. innovate. So we are really connecting the industry together and as a data point Daniel I think we have grown our membership has grown to almost 4,000 members companies around the globe and which is more than double since I joined semi and I think members are appreciating that we're creating value for the

entire value chain of the industry. That's great news, great progress. I look forward to hearing more about it. Hopefully we can get an update later on this year, Ajit. And, you know, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Thank you for having me. That concludes our podcast. Thank you all for listening and have a great day.