The world PCB market in 2026: AI servers, China plus one and Thailand

World printed circuit board output grew 15 to 17% in 2025 on the two most widely quoted estimates, and both estimators attribute the growth mainly to AI servers and data-centre networking.^[7][1] This report compares the estimates, identifies the products driving growth, sets out where boards are made and why capacity is moving to Southeast Asia, and assesses the implications for Thailand and for buyers sourcing there.

Key points

• Prismark put 2025 world PCB output at US$85.2 billion in its fourth-quarter 2025 report and US$85.8 billion in its first-quarter 2026 report. TPCA and ITRI put it at US$92.4 billion.^[7][9][1]
• Growth is concentrated in high-layer-count boards. Prismark forecasts 79% growth in 2026 for boards with 18 or more layers, against 3.1% for 4 to 6 layer boards.^[8]
• China mainland still makes about 58% of the world's boards. The rest of Asia, which includes Southeast Asia, is the fastest-growing region in Prismark's forecast.^[9]
• TPCA estimates Thailand's 2025 output at US$5.06 billion, 5.4% of the world total, the largest in Southeast Asia. A year earlier, TPCA published an ITRI forecast of US$3.9 billion.^[2][5]
• Trade data show a smaller footprint. Thai customs recorded US$1.58 billion of bare-board exports and US$3.54 billion of imports in 2025. By exports Thailand ranked seventh in 2024, just behind Malaysia.^[23][24]
• US trade rules changed twice in 2026. In February the US Supreme Court ruled that the emergency-powers law behind the 2025 "reciprocal" tariffs does not authorise tariffs. In July a new 12.5% Section 301 tariff on Thai goods took effect, at the same rate as China and Vietnam.^[18][17]

Market size, 2024 to 2030

Two sets of estimates are compared. Prismark is an industry research firm;^[8] its figures are cited as quoted in the filings of listed PCB makers. The Taiwan Printed Circuit Association (TPCA) publishes its own estimates with the Industry, Science and Technology International Strategy Center (ISTI) of Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).^[1]

Sources: Shennan Circuits,^[7] WUS Printed Circuit,^[8] Victory Giant,^[9] TPCA.^[1]

Prismark's 2024 base was US$73.6 billion.^[7] WUS reports that world output in the first quarter of 2026 was about 26.3% higher than a year earlier.^[8] Prismark also expects the area of board shipped to grow from about 483 million to about 628 million square metres by 2030, or 5.4% a year, far slower than value.^[8]

The two series differ by US$6.5 to 7.2 billion for 2025, and neither release explains the difference. Growth rates are the comparable measure, and both put 2025 growth at 15 to 17%. Prismark's own revisions are the larger caution: in one quarter its 2030 forecast rose by US$21 billion and its five-year growth rate from 7.7% to 11.0%. Long-range PCB forecasts are currently tracking sentiment about AI capital spending.

Growth by product: AI servers, HDI and substrates

For 2025, Prismark's fourth-quarter report estimates that boards with 18 or more layers grew 72.8%, HDI 26.0% and IC substrates 18.2%, while flexible boards grew 3.2%.^[7] Its 2026 forecast keeps the same pattern.^[8]

Source: Prismark Q1 2026 report, as quoted by WUS Printed Circuit.^[8]

Layer count drives the high-end growth. Conventional server boards typically have 14 to 24 layers, while AI server boards have 20 to 30 or more.^[13] Victory Giant's interim report puts the AI server PCB market at US$16 billion in 2025 (estimator not stated).^[9] At TTM Technologies, a US-listed maker, data-centre and networking sales rose 91% year on year in the second quarter of 2026. That segment made up 40% of revenue.^[10]

Substrates are the other bottleneck. TPCA and ITRI estimate world substrate output at US$14.75 billion in 2025 and US$19.51 billion in 2026, up 32.3%.^[3] Counted by company headquarters, Taiwanese firms held 35.6% of the substrate market in 2025, Korean firms 27.9% and Japanese firms 22.7%. Taiwanese firms held 41.3% of ABF substrates.^[3] TPCA reports that Ibiden supplies about 70% of AI GPU substrates.^[4]

Supply is tight upstream. TPCA reports shortages of low-CTE glass cloth for substrates, and of high-grade glass cloth and copper foil for boards, with the shortages pushing up prices.^[3][6] The effect extends to other board types: WUS reports that gross margin on its automotive boards fell about 6.2 percentage points in the first half of 2026 because raw-material costs rose faster than it could pass them on.^[8] TPCA also warns that consumer demand is soft, because memory makers moving capacity to AI products have pushed up phone and PC costs.^[1]

Production by location and ownership

Production can be counted by factory location, as Prismark does, or by owner headquarters, as TPCA does.

Source: Prismark, as quoted by Victory Giant.^[9] Shares calculated from the published dollar figures, rounded.

Prismark expects China's output to grow 10.5% a year to 2030, against 13.2% for the rest of Asia. WUS reads Southeast Asia as the fastest-growing region, driven by supplier diversification, geopolitical risk and tariffs, while China keeps more than half of world output.^[9][8]

By ownership, Chinese-owned firms held 34.9% of world output in 2024 and an estimated 37.6% in 2025. Japanese-owned firms held 14.4% and Korean-owned firms 9.8% in 2024.^[4] Taiwanese-owned firms still made 63.7% of their output in China in the first quarter of 2026. They made 32.3% in Taiwan and 4.0% in Southeast Asia.^[6] TPCA estimates that Southeast Asia makes about 12.3% of world output, but that locally owned firms make only about 1%.^[2]

Both measures point the same way: the shift out of China is small relative to total output and is carried out mostly by Chinese and Taiwanese firms.^[2][12] China's own capacity is also growing: more than 20 Chinese PCB companies announced large expansions in the first half of 2026.^[13] In April 2026, Zhen Ding, the largest maker by revenue, broke ground on a high-end PCB campus in Huai'an, Jiangsu province, a CNY40 billion investment according to DIGITIMES.^[14]

China plus one and US trade policy

Nikkei Asia reports that the shift of PCB supply from China and Taiwan accelerated after Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei in 2022. Since then, US technology companies including Microsoft, Apple and Dell have been looking beyond China for assembly and critical components.^[12] In under three years, nearly 60 Chinese and Taiwanese PCB makers set up in Thailand.^[12] The 19% US "reciprocal" tariff on Thailand in 2025 had limited effect on the industry, because the boards are shipped to assembly plants in Vietnam, India and elsewhere before the finished products reach the US.^[12]

The legal basis has since changed. On 20 February 2026 the US Supreme Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorise the President to impose tariffs. The reciprocal tariffs had been imposed under that law.^[18] On 23 July 2026 the US Trade Representative determined to impose Section 301 tariffs, in effect from 24 July, on economies found not to be enforcing bans on imports made with forced labour. The rate is 12.5% for Thailand, Vietnam and China and 10% for Malaysia and India. Taiwan's rate is set so that the regular duty plus the new tariff comes to 10% where the regular duty is lower.^[17] Thai press reports list printed circuit boards among the Thai products covered.^[16] A separate Section 301 investigation into excess manufacturing capacity covers 16 partners, including Thailand. For Thailand it names automotive and parts, machinery, and rubber products, not electronics.^[22]

Research on the US-China trade war since 2018 provides context. Alfaro and Chor found US sourcing shifting from China to Vietnam and Mexico, with early signs that prices from those places were rising.^[19] Freund and co-authors found that the countries replacing China in strategic industries tend to be deeply integrated in China's supply chains.^[21] Fajgelbaum and co-authors found that many "bystander" countries also raised their exports of the affected products to the rest of the world outside the United States and China.^[20]

Thailand's PCB investment fits these findings. The capital comes mostly from China and Taiwan, high-end materials are imported, and Nikkei's sources say boards go to assembly plants in third countries before the finished products reach the US.^[12] The July 2026 action applies one rate to Thai, Chinese and Vietnamese goods, leaving tariff treatment neutral among the three. Customer requirements for a second source, and AI supply chains that need capacity quickly, now account for more of the shift.

Company moves, 2025 to 2026

Prismark ranked Shennan fourth among world PCB makers by expected 2025 revenue, and Victory Giant seventh.^[7][9]

Thailand: output and investment

Estimates of Thailand's output have been revised sharply.

TPCA's July 2026 figure for 2025 is 30% above the forecast it published a year earlier, and its 2026 forecast already exceeds the 2030 figure ISTI gave in 2025. The release does not specify whether the revision reflects faster ramp-ups or a change in method, so any single estimate of Thai output carries wide uncertainty.

The Board of Investment (BOI) says it received applications for promotion of 214 PCB-related projects, covering PCB production, PCBA and key PCB materials, from 2023 to November 2025, with proposed investment of more than THB300 billion. These are applications for promotion, not money invested. The BOI describes Thailand as ASEAN's largest PCB base and one of the world's top five.^[11] The BOI also describes Zhen Ding's Thai operation as the company's first and only manufacturing base outside China and Taiwan, and dates its start of production to September 2025.^[11]

The MPBxChange register lists 39 PCB plants in Thailand. Of these, 33 are reported operating or ramping and 6 are under construction or announced. Of the 39 plants that publish a founding year, 28 were registered in 2022 or later.

The same sources indicate where the cluster has room to develop:

• Thailand remains a net importer of PCBs.^[5] Customs data put 2025 imports of bare boards at US$3.54 billion and exports at US$1.58 billion, a large domestic market for local plants.^[23]
• Chinese-owned makers produce about 1.7% of their output in Thailand, with most of their capacity elsewhere.^[4]
• Experienced production-line managers now earn THB80,000 to 100,000 a month, double the level of a few years ago, and high-end materials are still imported.^[12] Skilled staff and local materials are the next stages of cluster development.
• Many new plants are in the start-up phase: customer qualification, product introduction and local team building.^[7] Some are further on: WUS reports that more than 90% of overseas customers of its Thai data-communications division had completed qualification in the first half of 2026, that the site's original capacity was essentially fully loaded, and that its Thai subsidiary made a profit in the second quarter of 2026.^[8]
• Renewable electricity accounts for only around 3% of power use at some leading Thai producers, and the pilot scheme for direct power purchase agreements is currently limited to data centres.^[15] Wider access would help plants meet customers' emissions targets.

Thailand's trade in bare boards

Output estimates come from industry bodies. Trade figures come from Thai customs, which reports them to the UN Comtrade database. They count bare printed circuits under HS heading 8534. A board that leaves Thailand already fitted with components is counted under the finished product instead, so exports show only part of what Thai plants make.^[23]

Three trends stand out.

1. Exports grew slowly over the decade. Thailand exported US$1.31 billion of bare boards in 2015 and US$1.58 billion in 2025. The 2025 figure is 30% above 2019 but below the 2021 peak of US$1.65 billion.^[23]
2. Imports almost tripled, from US$1.21 billion in 2019, when trade was roughly in balance, to US$3.54 billion in 2025. Thailand has imported more bare boards than it exported every year since 2020, and China supplied 64.5% of 2025 imports.^[23]
3. Exports accelerated in 2026. In July 2026 exports of printed circuits were US$232 million, 78.8% more than a year earlier, according to the Office of Industrial Economics (OIE),^[26] against a 2025 monthly average of about US$131 million (annual total divided by twelve). In December 2025, imports of printed circuits were US$387.3 million, up 91.9% on a year earlier, according to the OIE.^[25]

Source: UN Comtrade, as reported by Thailand.^[23] Comtrade lists Taiwan as "Other Asia, not elsewhere specified". Imports from China grew 3.6 times between 2019 and 2025, while imports from Japan fell by about a third.

By exports, Thailand ranked seventh in 2024, with 2.6% of the bare-board exports reported to Comtrade, slightly behind Malaysia.^[24]

Source: UN Comtrade, exports to the world by reporting country; shares are of the US$51.7 billion reported by 118 reporting economies (UN Comtrade, October 2026).^[24] Hong Kong's total includes re-exports. Vietnam's 2024 figures were not yet in the database in September 2026.

The BOI's top-five ranking and seventh place by exports measure different things. The BOI ranks output, which includes boards that Thai assembly plants fit into products at home.^[11] The export ranking counts only boards that cross the border bare. Through 2024 the new plants barely registered in trade figures: exports were flat while assembly lines in Thailand drew increasing volumes of boards from abroad, mostly from China. Exports rose 19% in 2025, and the 2026 monthly figures indicate that Thai plants are now shipping at scale. The 2026 annual total will show whether the trend holds.

Implications for sourcing

Five implications for buyers follow from the reported figures.

1. The AI cycle reaches mainstream programmes mainly through materials. Standard 4 to 6 layer boards are forecast to grow 3% in 2026, while glass cloth and copper foil are short and TPCA reports the shortages pushing up prices.^[8][6] Agreeing laminate grades and approved alternatives early, and asking how the supplier allocates material, limits exposure.
2. Qualification applies at site level. New Thai lines go through customer qualification before volume production, as the makers themselves note.^[7] The relevant questions are which site and line will build the boards, which certifications that site holds, and what its yields are.
3. New entrants differ in how fully their capacity is committed. Nikkei's sources describe two kinds of new entrant: those that arrived with anchor customers, such as Victory Giant and Gold Circuit, and those that built first and are now competing for work.^[12] The second group may be more open to mid-volume programmes.
4. Tariffs are best modelled on the finished product. For goods entering the US, Thai origin now carries the same 12.5% Section 301 rate as China and Vietnam, and more than Malaysia's 10%.^[17] Duty depends on where the final product is assembled and how its origin is determined, and importers should expect requests for documents on forced-labour compliance.
5. Plant power supply affects reported emissions. Low renewable supply at Thai plants may raise a buyer's reported supply-chain emissions. Krungsri Research, cited by Reccessary, expects decarbonisation to become a supplier qualification requirement within three to five years.^[15]

Data and method

Research date: 24 September 2026. Primary documents: TPCA releases; the annual and interim reports of Shennan Circuits, WUS Printed Circuit and Victory Giant, which quote Prismark; TTM's results release; the US Trade Representative's Federal Register notice; the US Supreme Court's opinion; two peer-reviewed journal articles and one working paper on relocating supply chains; Thailand's customs returns to UN Comtrade and the monthly reports of Thailand's Office of Industrial Economics; and trade and business press. Prismark figures are as quoted in listed companies' filings. Plant counts and the chart come from the MPBxChange register of PCB plants in Thailand, compiled from company, BOI and press records. Interpretation in the text is MPBxChange analysis.