By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Global semiconductor sales are expected to hit $1 trillion this year, the Semiconductor Industry Association said on Friday.

The group, which represents most U.S. chip firms, said that chip sales hit $791.7 billion in 2025, an increase of 25.6% over the previous year. That booming growth is expected to continue into this year as major technology firms around the world spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build out data centers for artificial intelligence.

The growth leader and largest segment of chips was the kind of advanced computing chips made by Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel. Sales of those products increased by 39.9%, totaling $301.9 billion in 2025.

The second-largest category was memory chips, whose prices are soaring amid an AI-induced shortage. Memory chip sales rose 34.8% to $223.1 billion.

But the AI boom has extended to nearly every part of the chip industry, with John Neuffer, the president and chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based industry group, saying that executives at a range of smaller firms expressed optimism for 2026 when he recently visited Silicon Valley.

"The refrain I heard was, 'No one knows what's going to happen with the AI build out a year from now, but my orders are completely full,'" Neuffer told Reuters. "At least for the next year, we're on a pretty, pretty strong glide path."

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San FranciscoEditing by Shri Navaratnam)

((stephen.nellis@thomsonreuters.com))