• Asia’s semiconductor boom fuels demand for industrial space and data centers: The semiconductor industry thrives amid a perfect storm of growth as EVs capture over 20% of the global car market in 2024, cloud spending in key APAC markets projected to more than double in 5 years, and AI infrastructure demand reaches unprecedented levels.
   

• AI accelerates chip innovation and optimizes the chip design process: Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are revolutionizing chip design, improving productivity and reducing the cost and time to market significantly.
   

• Semiconductor talent access to drive chip plant decisions: The demand for chips is growing, widening the talent gap. The availability of a skilled labor pool is becoming a decisive factor in choosing where to build new semiconductor fabrication plants.
   

• The sustainability imperative: The growing demand for AI technologies is intensifying the urgency for semiconductor companies to address sustainability concerns in chip manufacturing. An experienced facilities management partner is key to identify areas of improvement and maintain facilities at optimum efficiency.

Mainland China, with the largest EV market share globally, is a critical driver for the semiconductor industry in the region. In 2024, 11.3 million EVs were sold in China, increasing by 40% y-o-y. Although China’s total volume of EV sales far exceeds the rest of the region, other APAC countries are also seeing a strong uptick in EV sales growth, notably in the Southeast Asian countries Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, which marked more than 100% y-o-y growth in 2024.

Chip demand is expected to grow as global EV sales remain on an upward trend. Conventional vehicles will also contribute to increased chip demand for safety and convenience features like navigation systems and infotainment.

Despite the spotlight on leading-edge chips, mature node chips are indispensable for automotive electronics, and many global players continue to commit investments in this area – for example, GlobalFoundries opened a USD5 billion wafer fab facility in Singapore with a focus on the automotive end-market.  

2. Digitalization drives cloud computing
 

The rise of cloud computing is driven by the need to increase business agility and competitiveness. As organizations embrace AI, they require high-performance infrastructure, and cloud services provide the foundation. This is fueling demand for scalable infrastructure and cloud-based solutions, contributing to the growth of the cloud computing market.

Governments and businesses in APAC are investing heavily in cloud infrastructure to support the digital economy. Cloud providers are actively expanding their data center capacity, but surging demand is still expected to outpace near-term supply, according to JLL’s 2025 Global Data Center Outlook.

3. Explosive surge in demand for AI infrastructure
 

AI has permeated nearly all industries ranging from manufacturing to healthcare. Demand for advanced computing power is at unprecedented levels and underpinning that are the semiconductor chips powering the increasingly complex AI models.

The Asia-Pacific region is at the center of the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Taiwan, with TSMC as the world’s largest chipmaker, stands out in the region as a powerhouse in semiconductor production, while other APAC countries are also seeing massive opportunity to expand their market share and technological capabilities. However, production of leading-edge chips is currently still dominated by TSMC, and supply is limited.

As demand soars for more and more processing power in response to the AI boom, amid graphics processing unit (GPU) supply bottlenecks, a new category of cloud providers known as neoclouds have come into play to address the need for more AI infrastructure. 

AI accelerates chip innovation and optimizes the chip design process
 

The surge in demand for AI applications, particularly generative AI and agentic AI, is propelling a corresponding need for computational power, high-speed memory and storage solutions. AI, in turn, is driving innovation in chip design and architecture, as well as creating opportunities for disruption in the industry.

As Moore's Law approaches its physical limits, the industry is shifting from traditional scaling to more innovative approaches in chip design.

Two emerging trends are particularly noteworthy:

• AI accelerators: These specialized chips are designed to optimize AI workloads, offering significant performance improvements over general-purpose processors for AI tasks.
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI & ML): Besides driving the demand for chips, AI & ML are revolutionizing chip design, facilitating the creation of unconventional designs that surpass the performance of even the best standard chips. It can also reduce the cost and time taken to market significantly.
   

AI & ML can be integrated as a copilot for the chip design process, for example automating tasks like chip layout optimization, which can improve productivity and reduce development time, especially important as the complexity of chip design increases. This can augment the capabilities of the human engineers and free up scarce talent resources to focus on higher-level work. 

Sustainability commitments are pushing chipmakers to implement ESG practices in their facility operations
 

Semiconductor manufacturing is a highly resource-intensive process, characterized by significant energy and water consumption, as well as substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Projections from Greenpeace estimate that the industry will generate 86 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030.

The demand for semiconductors is expected to surge in the coming years, primarily driven by the growing demand for AI. According to Greenpeace, this increasing demand translates to a projected global electricity consumption of 237 terawatt hours (TWh) for semiconductor manufacturing by 2030.

A single semiconductor fabrication plant can use up to 10 million gallons of water per day, most of it used in the manufacturing process. Water is essential to clean and rinse the semiconductor devices at various steps and is also used in cooling systems to maintain the manufacturing equipment at optimal operating temperatures.

Given the increasing importance of ESG considerations, many semiconductor firms are making commitments to sustainability goals. For example, TSMC is collaborating with its suppliers to procure renewable energy, and GlobalFoundries’ Journey to Zero commitment involves aiming for net-zero GHG emissions and 100% carbon-neutral power supply by 2050.

As part of efforts to meet these sustainability goals, companies commonly aim to improve energy and water efficiency in day-to-day facility operations. For example, a US computer giant reuses wastewater generated during chip manufacturing for landscape irrigation at its facility in China, reducing utility consumption by up to 30%.