The explosive popularity of Meta's AI agent Muse is pulling market attention back to the server CPU supply chain. Jefferies believes that as AI accelerates from chatbots to agent-based applications, computing power demand across inference, orchestration, and infrastructure layers will keep expanding, offering systemic re-rating opportunities for PCB and ABF substrate suppliers.

Muse topped the US iOS App Store free chart on September 18, just ten days after its launch. In its latest research note, Jefferies highlighted that this milestone signals AI agents are transitioning from niche tools to mainstream consumer products, reigniting discussions around server CPU demand.

Looking at market forecasts, Jefferies projects the AI PCB total addressable market (TAM) will grow from $7 billion in 2025 to $73 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of roughly 60%. Meanwhile, the ABF substrate TAM is expected to expand from $8 billion to $30 billion over the same period, with a CAGR of about 30%. These figures provide clear long-term growth support for related supply chain stocks.

Muse's Breakout: AI Agents Move Into the Consumer Mainstream

Meta's Muse is not the first AI agent product aimed at everyday consumers, but with backing from a tech giant and its mainstream positioning, it has become one of the most recognizable cases bringing the 'agent' concept into the public eye.

Jefferies notes that prior similar products were often geared toward professional users or high-end paid tools, while Muse's launch strategy is clearly different, packaging agent capabilities as a daily-use consumer product. Reaching the top of the US iOS free chart within just ten days has prompted the market to reassess the pace of large-scale AI agent adoption.

Jefferies believes this event will be a key driver for renewed market focus on server CPU demand in the near term, as agent applications consume significantly more inference computing power, multi-task orchestration, and underlying infrastructure than traditional chatbot scenarios.

ABF Substrates: Structural Growth Meets Capacity Crowding-Out Effects

At the ABF substrate level, Jefferies says major suppliers from Japan, South Korea, and Europe will continue to benefit from robust server CPU demand. Product iteration trends, including larger package sizes, higher layer counts, and more complex designs, are putting sustained pressure on yield management and capacity supply, raising industry barriers.

At the same time, ABF substrate capacity expansion overlaps with BT substrates in terms of raw materials and equipment, a structural characteristic that Jefferies says will create a crowding-out effect on BT substrates.

Based on Prismark data and Jefferies projections, the ABF substrate TAM is expected to grow from $8 billion in 2025 to $30 billion by 2030, with server CPUs and AI accelerators serving as the two core demand drivers.

On overall scale, Jefferies forecasts server CPU shipments will rise from approximately 29 million units in 2025 to about 75 million units by 2030, covering general-purpose, AI head-node, and AI standalone deployment scenarios, with annual growth in the double-digit range.

For the overall AI PCB TAM, Jefferies, citing Prismark data, expects the market to expand from around $7 billion in 2025 to roughly $73 billion by 2030, a five-year CAGR of about 60%, with contributions from CPUs, Nvidia and non-Nvidia accelerators, switches, and optical modules.