Power Semiconductor Industry: Dual Drive from AI Computing Power and New Energy, Tight Supply Ushers in a Prosperous Upturn Cycle

The power semiconductor industry is at the starting point of a new upward cycle. Since 2026, global power semiconductor companies have intensively issued price increase notices, with price hikes for core devices such as MOSFETs and IGBTs generally ranging from 10% to 25%, and some high-end products seeing even more significant increases. The essence of this round of price increases is not merely cost pass-through, but the result of the resonance of three factors: the explosive growth of AI computing infrastructure, the sustained high prosperity of the new energy industry, and the structural contraction of global 8-inch mature process capacity. The core logic of this cycle is "persistent supply tightness," and industry profit margins are expected to continue improving over the next few years.

1. What Happened? -- The Power Semiconductor Industry Sees the Onset of a Comprehensive Price Surge

1. Power Semiconductors: The "CPU" of Power Electronics Systems

Power semiconductors are core components in electronic devices that achieve electrical energy conversion and circuit control, and are hailed as the "CPU" of power electronic devices. Their core functions are reflected in three aspects: mutual conversion between DC and AC (rectification and inversion), voltage conversion (step-up and step-down), and AC frequency conversion. These functions make power semiconductors indispensable key components in almost all electrical equipment.

From a product form perspective, power semiconductors can be divided into three categories:

Power discrete devices: including diodes, thyristors, MOSFETs, IGBTs, etc., are the basic units of power conversion;

Power modules: modules formed by packaging multiple power devices according to certain functions, such as IGBT modules;

Power ICs: integrate power devices with peripheral circuits such as driver circuits and protection circuits on a single chip.

From the perspective of downstream applications, power semiconductors widely cover fields such as industrial control (motor drives, robots, automated production lines), new energy vehicles (electric drive systems, charging piles, on-board power supplies), consumer electronics (home appliance power management, fast charging), wind and solar energy storage (inverters), and AI data centers (server power supplies, UPS systems).

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