Geopolitical Changes, Sustainability Progress, and Collaboration Efforts at SEMICON West 2025

On October 7th, Ajit Manocha, SEMI’s President and CEO, opened the show with an overview of where the global industry stands. Unsurprisingly, the industry continues to face ongoing challenges like geopolitical instability, technology inflections, energy and PFAS concerns, talent shortages, and a fragmented global supply chain. But despite everything, Manocha reminded us that issues, especially geopolitical ones, come and go. Obstacles, he said, can’t be overcome by individual CEOs, companies, or countries.

I spent three full days at the conference attending every keynote and executive panel, as well as SEMI’s pre-show Market Symposium. SEMICON West is so large that it’s impossible to attend everything, but I did my best to gather as much information as I could in case you didn’t get a chance to go.

Trade, Tariffs, and the U.S. Semiconductor Supply Chain

It’s no secret that trade conditions have changed dramatically since last year. During the Market Symposium on October 6th, seven industry experts explained today’s trade environment from different vantage points. Speakers covered everything from tariffs, U.S. trade conditions, and their impacts on other countries and product markets.

I think one of the most optimistic things to come out of this year’s Market Symposium was when Christoper Thomas from Integrated Insights indicated global optimism for U.S. AI leadership. Iacob Koch-Weser from BCG also mentioned that despite changes, the U.S. is still an appealing place for semiconductor investment. Generally speaking, companies want to build facilities that are close to their customers, supply base, and talent – and the U.S. is making strides in each of these areas.

But of course, we have to consider other factors as well. Jan Vardaman from TechSearch International reminded the Market Symposium audience that if the U.S. specifically wants to create a sustainable packaging ecosystem, there needs to be support for American assembly facilities. Right now, the OSAT market is heavily concentrated in Asia – and this is for good reason. Asia-based OSATs not only offer a much lower assembly cost, but they also have decades of expertise providing these services. For OSATs to succeed in the U.S., businesses will need to sacrifice profits.

In addition, SEMI’s Clark Tseng reported that U.S. tariff revenue skyrocketed from $7 billion in January 2025, up to $29.5 billion by August. Although tariffs brought an extra $22.5 billion into the U.S. economy, we need to weigh the cost of such policies. First, companies are sacrificing their bottom lines to compensate for them. And second, tariff uncertainty is causing some businesses to slow their U.S. investments, although investments aren’t halted entirely.

Paul Poliakov from PwC also explained the U.S. semiconductor investment landscape from Taiwan’s perspective. He noted that higher facilities costs, as well as complex and intimidating compliance and trade regulations, are making it more difficult to invest in the U.S. However, he did mention that the United States-Taiwan Expedited Double Tax-Relief Act could help ease burdens. This legislation passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in March, but it has yet to pass in the Senate.

Finally, there was a heavy emphasis on supply chain regionalization throughout the entire event. Businesses and governments are realizing the national security consequences of today’s fragmented semiconductor supply chain, prompting them to move key manufacturing processes closer to or within their borders when possible.

Sustainability Initiatives and Progress 

The October 7th Path to Success – The Semiconductor Leads the Way for a Resilient Future panel discussion offered an overview of the industry’s sustainability progress. In my opinion, the most important piece of this discussion was Elena Kockerovsky’s urgent message to focus on climate goals, as opposed to getting distracted by policies, regulations, and shifting standards. Kockerovsky is a climate program director at Applied Materials.

It seems, at least from discussions on the SEMICON West keynote stage, that the prevailing approach for tackling sustainability challenges is to use AI to improve climate data and take more informed action. Micron’s Elizabeth Elroy also highlighted the opportunity to replace aging infrastructure with more sustainable equipment, in addition to building more energy efficient products.

However, if the solution is to deploy AI to solve the environmental problems that AI causes (at least partially), it seems like we have a chicken and egg situation. We all know that AI can be extremely power hungry, and this would presumably need to be addressed before AI can solve sustainability issues. Fortunately, work in this area is being done – especially on the materials and equipment side, but it’s not easy. For example, ASM’s Angada Sachid noted that one or two misplaced atoms during deposition can be the difference between a power-efficient and a power-hungry chip. For added context, there are around 10 trillion deposition locations to consider.

At the end of the sustainability panel, Mousumi Bhat, VP of Sustainability Programs at SEMI, also mentioned the Pik Research Department’s Climate Clock. As of October 2025, the clock shows the world has three years and nine months left to address climate change.

Nevertheless, Bhat reinforced that the industry has made substantial progress, although challenges still persist. One such challenge is reducing PFAS.

During the keynote executive panel, Powering the Next Decade: AI’s Impact on Semiconductor Infrastructure and Market, Merck’s Laura Matz highlighted the need to replace existing lithography materials with PFAS-free versions. However, the industry is expected to do so while maintaining the same performance and yield standards. TEL’s Mark Dougherty added that there are still “several areas” where the industry has no solution for PFAS.

I came away from this year’s SEMICON West with the following question: At what point will sustainability become so dire, that the industry will put it above profits and technological advancements? I will say that I didn’t get a chance to visit the Sustainability Pavilion, which is where the more in-depth sustainability conversations happened. But from what I learned at the keynote stage, I’ll be honest – I didn’t leave feeling optimistic about the direction we’re going in. With less than four years left to solve such high-stakes concerns, I hope to see more of an emphasis on sustainability on the main stage next year.

Moving Forward – The Need for Collaboration  

Collaboration was the cornerstone of this year’s SEMICON West. Nearly every presenter emphasized it in some way, and this is because of the monumental complexity of everything the industry is tasked with. SEMICON West attendees represent those responsible for solving the climate crisis without sacrificing anything, educating the next generation and upskilling the current workforce, and innovating at an unprecedented rate to meet aggressive demand for AI. The only way to even scratch the surface is to work together.

John Kibarian from PDF Solutions dedicated his entire keynote discussion to the topic of collaboration, mainly in the context of the semiconductor supply chain. He underscored how critical each point in the supply chain is, from fabless companies – all the way to external vendors. This is because when something goes wrong early in the supply chain, those negative effects can compound down to the final supplier. Although everyone seems to agree that collaboration is essential for the future of the industry, a major hurdle is IP protection.

Kibarian brought up PDF’s secureWISE system as a potential solution to collaboration concerns, citing its secure infrastructure, automated orchestration, and ability to analyze raw data. SEMI’s Conductor platform is another tool addressing this need for the supply chain.

But the supply chain is just one piece of a very convoluted puzzle. Due to the extreme complexity of seemingly everything, addressing one thing often requires more collaboration somewhere else. For instance, as the industry progresses with chiplets, it must also develop new and innovative testing methods in tandem. In addition, Sesha Varadarajan from Lam Research also touched on Lam’s Semiverse platform for semiconductor education, further underscoring how interconnected different industry functions have become.

Overall, SEMICON West 2025 reinforced how nothing in this industry takes place in a vacuum.

Final Thoughts

With so many U.S. policy updates over the past year, I was extremely interested to learn how these changes have begun affecting the industry at-large. From my perspective, Market Symposium did a solid job covering both the good and the bad. In general, the numbers presented indicated that ever-changing tariff policies are making the U.S. a more difficult place for semiconductor investment overall.

Despite challenging trade and compliance regulations, some Market Symposium speakers did clarify that the current administration is very much interested in “winning” the AI race, although its punitive tariff strategy differs greatly from the Biden-era grants and incentives approach. Moving into next year, I’d be most interested to see if the Trump administration simplifies its trade compliance regulations to reduce barriers for foreign direct investment, specifically for allied countries.

In terms of collaboration, this year’s SEMICON West did a great job showcasing efforts across the entire value chain. In addition to the programs I mentioned above, there were also a few workforce development collaborations discussed, like the National Network for Microelectronics Education (NNME) – a federal program operated by the SEMI Foundation. Francoise will cover this in more detail in an upcoming podcast episode.

Lastly, as sustainability reaches a critical point, I’d like to draw attention to industry-specific mitigation efforts. SEMI’s Semiconductor Climate Consortium (SCC) is actively working to speed decarbonization by collaborating across the entire microelectronics sector. The Global Semiconductor Alliance is also making similar strides.

Overall, this year’s SEMICON West served as a reminder for how fast things can change in a year. I’m interested to see what next year’s conference brings.