WESEMiBAY Wrap-Up: The Chinese Semiconductor Ecosystem Behind 156,700 Attendees

When an exhibition stops being just a product showcase and becomes the annual meeting point for the entire supply chain, its value is no longer measured by booth count. The 2026 WESEMiBAY (Wanxin Exhibition) has drawn to a close at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center: 3 days, nearly 80,000 square meters, over 156,700 professional visitors, more than 1,000 exhibitors, and 3,000+ annual debut products—these numbers sketch the outline of a Chinese integrated circuit ecosystem that is rapidly taking shape.

A Leap in Scale: From "Exhibition" to Industry Hub

Under the theme "Chips Toward the Future, Intelligence Creates the Ecosystem," this year's WESEMiBAY featured four core exhibition zones: wafer manufacturing, compound semiconductors, advanced packaging, and IC design/AI infrastructure. More than 1,000 companies from over 20 countries and regions exhibited, with international equipment giants such as ASML, Applied Materials, Lam Research, TEL, and KLA sharing the floor with domestic players including NAURA, AMEC, ACM Research, Piotech, and Hwatsing Technology.

This "international giants + domestic echelon" co-exhibition structure reflects not merely the scale of participation, but the reality that China's semiconductor equipment and materials segment has moved from "filling gaps" to "running abreast." One exhibitor's observation is telling: in the past, people at trade shows looked at "who showed up"; now they look at "who debuted what."

Interestingly, the newly established AIE AI Infrastructure Industry Ecosystem zone brought the "chip—compute—application" loop directly onto the show floor. Companies such as Shenzhen Smart City Group, Huawei, Qiyunfang, Chengdu Sino Micro, Wanliyan, and Pango Micro focused on computing architecture, intelligent computing infrastructure, test and measurement, and software tools—a layout pointing to a clear trend: AI infrastructure is becoming the next demand explosion point for the semiconductor industry.

The division of labor between Fab and Fabless is the basic framework for understanding the semiconductor supply chain. Fab is short for Fabrication and refers to companies that own wafer manufacturing lines, responsible for turning chip designs into physical wafers—a capital-intensive segment where a single 12-inch production line can require billions of dollars in investment. In contrast, Fabless (fabless design companies) only do chip design and outsource manufacturing to foundries. There are also Foundry (pure-play foundries such as TSMC) and IDM (integrated design and manufacturing, such as Silan) models. This year's WESEMiBAY invited 43 Fab companies for targeted matchmaking—essentially bridging the "last mile" between equipment and materials suppliers and manufacturing lines. Fabs are the most concentrated buyers of equipment, materials, and components, and their process requirements directly determine the R&D direction of upstream suppliers.

Debut Economy: Technology Trends in 3,000 New Products

WESEMiBAY has made "new product debuts" a core competency. Joint launches at the opening ceremony, dedicated press conferences, and booth displays ran in parallel, with over 3,000 annual debut products showcased—providing a direct window for upstream and downstream technology evaluation and product selection.

From the debut lineup, several technology mainlines are clear:

• Packaging lithography and core subsystems: Shanghai Micro Electronics brought its new-generation advanced packaging lithography system SSD820, supporting software, and displacement measurement interferometers and other core subsystems.
• Compound semiconductors accelerating onto vehicles: Founder Microelectronics launched SiC DIP32 power modules, debuting 1200V 35mΩ and 1200V 60mΩ products precisely targeting OBC, suspension electronic control, and automotive DC-DC needs; YOFC Advanced released SiC MOSFET series chips and embedded PCB power modules for automotive main drive, while also launching single-tube series based on mass-produced PG4E chips and EZ2C/3C module families for AI data centers.
• Advances in deposition and etching equipment: Piotech introduced NF-300M Flowable Carbon film deposition technology and equipment; AMEC highlighted its Primo XD-RIE™ extreme high-aspect-ratio etching equipment and 12-inch ALD molybdenum equipment Prefima Unicore™ AM.
• EDA and AI security: Qiyunfang addressed the two major enterprise AI deployment challenges of efficiency and security with an EDA system-level electronic design toolchain and the "Xiaolongxia™" agent security solution.

Connecting these debuts reveals the collaborative thread across equipment, materials, processes, and applications—self-reliance is no longer a slogan but is reflected in the iteration cadence of specific models and parameters.

SiC (silicon carbide) power devices represent third-generation wide-bandgap semiconductors. Compared with traditional silicon-based IGBTs, SiC has a breakdown field strength about 10 times that of silicon and thermal conductivity about 3 times higher, enabling operation at higher voltages, temperatures, and switching frequencies with significantly reduced energy loss. This makes it ideal for EV main-drive inverters, on-board chargers (OBC), and DC-DC converters, and a key enabler of 800V high-voltage platforms. The 1200V/35mΩ and 1200V/60mΩ mentioned refer to the device's voltage rating and on-resistance—lower on-resistance means lower conduction loss. Meanwhile, SiC is rapidly penetrating AI data center power supplies, PV inverters, and energy storage, which is exactly why manufacturers like YOFC Advanced are pursuing both automotive and data center product lines.

Density of Ideas: Industry Consensus Across 40+ Forums

The 2026 Greater Bay Area Semiconductor Conference, held concurrently with the exhibition, built a multi-dimensional exchange matrix with over 40 summit forums. The opening ceremony and semiconductor industry development summit brought together representatives from government, industry, academia, research, application, capital, services, and finance to jointly launch an industry ecosystem co-building initiative; closed-door seminars on central SOE integrated circuit industry development and international and domestic TOP20 executive strategy sessions first built consensus around supply chain resilience, advanced process collaboration, and AI-era opportunities.

Academic density was equally high. The three-day Greater Bay Area Integrated Circuit Science and Technology Conference featured six tracks—IC materials and novel device principles, design and system integration, packaging and reliability testing, manufacturing and processes, future semiconductor intelligent manufacturing, and post-Moore cross-paradigm frontier intersections—led by academicians including Mao Junfa, Huang Wei, Chang Ruihua, and Shi Yi, gathering experts from over 50 universities and research institutes nationwide and delivering 70+ high-level academic reports.

The parallel design of industry and academic forums gives the "from paper to production line" dialogue a landing point. One attending scholar noted that academic reports and industry needs often "talked past each other" in the past, but WESEMiBAY puts both in the same time and space, making discussions noticeably more granular.

The post-Moore era refers to the technology phase after Moore's Law—that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every 18 to 24 months—gradually slows under both physical and economic constraints. As process scaling approaches atomic dimensions, short-channel effects, leakage, and soaring costs make simply "shrinking transistors" unsustainable. The industry has thus turned to multiple paths: first, advanced packaging (such as 2.5D/3D IC and Chiplet), improving system performance through heterogeneous integration of multiple small chips; second, new materials and device structures (such as GAA gate-all-around, 2D materials, compound semiconductors); third, architectural innovation and hardware-software co-design. The "post-Moore cross-paradigm frontier intersections" track at the academic forum is precisely a response to this shift—the competitive focus is moving from a single process node to collaborative innovation across packaging, materials, architecture, and systems.

Supply-Demand Matchmaking: Real Deals Between 43 Fabs and 6,500 Buyers

The exhibition's popularity must ultimately translate into transactions. This year's WESEMiBAY invited 43 core wafer manufacturing companies including Hua Hong Semiconductor, CanSemi, GTA Semiconductor, Yangtze Memory Technologies, Wuhan Xinxin, Nexchip, ChangXin Memory, and Silan for matchmaking, attracting over 6,500 professional buyers and organizing nearly 50 supply chain, investment, and procurement matchmaking events.

A batch of cooperation projects landed on site: Shenzhen Pinghu Laboratory signed strategic cooperation agreements with 20 supply chain partners to jointly build a compound semiconductor industry-academia-research-application innovation ecosystem; CHIPX partnered with Tiantong, Liuxin Photonics, Luceda, and others to open wafer-level manufacturing and tape-out services based on China's first photonic chip pilot line; Turing Quantum signed strategic cooperation with Shenzhen Smart City Computing Network Technology and Asia Computing Network & Quantum Computing Technology to build a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao heterogeneous quantum-supercomputing platform; Silicon Core Technology, together with Matxin, CR Micro, South China University of Technology, Guangdong University of Technology, and more than 10 other units, initiated the establishment of the Greater Bay Area 3D IC Advanced Packaging Innovation Center.

The common feature of these signings is "platform-type cooperation" rather than single-point procurement—meaning WESEMiBAY is extending from transaction matchmaking toward ecosystem building.

Compound semiconductors refer to semiconductor materials composed of two or more elements, typically including GaAs (gallium arsenide), GaN (gallium nitride), SiC (silicon carbide), and InP (indium phosphide), as distinct from elemental semiconductors such as silicon and germanium made of a single element. With higher electron mobility, wider bandgaps, or higher photoelectric conversion efficiency, they offer advantages silicon cannot match in RF communications, optical communications, power devices, and novel displays. Because compound semiconductors typically require heteroepitaxial growth on epitaxial wafers, their manufacturing processes, equipment, and material systems differ significantly from silicon-based lines, often relying on dedicated pilot lines and specialty process platforms. The compound semiconductor industry-academia-research-application ecosystem co-built by Shenzhen Pinghu Laboratory, and the photonic chip pilot line relied upon by CHIPX, are typical carriers of this "specialty process + pilot-line commercialization" model.

Next Stop: 100,000 Square Meters and 80% Booking Rate

This year's exhibition results have already translated into expectations for the next edition. The 2027 WESEMiBAY will expand to 100,000 square meters, using all nine halls of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center (Futian). As of now, more than 860 companies have locked in exhibitor slots in advance, with pre-sold space exceeding 80,000 square meters and a booking rate of 80%.

The booking rate is a harder indicator than on-site foot traffic. It shows that companies are willing to vote for this platform with real money. From "high popularity" to "strong magnetic field," the Greater Bay Area semiconductor industry is integrating into the global innovation network with a more open posture—and WESEMiBAY is becoming a fixed window for observing China's integrated circuit self-reliance progress.

One-line Summary

With 156,700 attendees, 3,000 debut products, and an 80% booking rate, the 2026 WESEMiBAY sketches a rapidly forming Chinese IC self-reliance ecosystem.

Paragraph Summary

The 2026 WESEMiBAY concluded in Shenzhen, attracting over 156,700 professional visitors and 1,000+ exhibitors across nearly 80,000 square meters, with four core zones: wafer manufacturing, compound semiconductors, advanced packaging, and IC design/AI infrastructure. Over 3,000 annual debut products covered packaging lithography, SiC power devices, etching and deposition equipment, and EDA toolchains, showing domestic equipment and materials moving from "gap-filling" to "running abreast." More than 40 forums led by academicians and 50+ universities advanced industry-academia dialogue. The event invited 43 Fab companies and 6,500+ buyers, facilitating multiple platform-type collaborations. In 2027 it will expand to 100,000 square meters, with 860+ companies already booked and an 80% booking rate.