Demand for artificial intelligence-enabled smartphones could help to protect parts of the semiconductor industry from a “vicious” downturn if investment in data centres slows, said the chief executive of the world’s largest provider of chip testing machines.
Doug Lefever, who leads Nvidia supplier Advantest, said he was watching for any sign of slower spending on AI by big US tech groups. Meta, Google and Microsoft have been heavy investors in data centres that can deliver massive amounts of computing power.
A fall-off “may not last long and then it may go right back up, but because of the concentration [of hyperscalers] right now in the market, any slowdown in the data centre buildout is going to have big reverberations in the supply chain”, said Lefever.