Bank of America hikes 2026 chip forecast to $1.3 trillion — NVIDIA, Broadcom, Marvell, AMD named as the top tools-and-infrastructure drivers
Bank of America raised its 2026 global chip-market forecast to $1.3 trillion, citing NVIDIA, Broadcom, Marvell, and AMD as the top tools-and-infrastructure drivers of the upgraded outlook. The $1.3T forecast represents roughly 25-30% growth over the prior forecast and signals BofA's view that the AI-chip demand trajectory is structurally robust through 2026 even with the China-market concession and the custom-ASIC competitive pressure on NVIDIA's GPU share.
The forecast-revision substance is the substantive piece. BofA's $1.3T chip-market forecast for 2026 is the broadest-scope upgrade among major financial-services research desks this cycle, and the firm explicitly cites four companies as the top drivers: NVIDIA on continued GPU dominance plus the Vera Rubin platform ramp, Broadcom on custom-ASIC partnerships (including the Anthropic-Google-Broadcom multi-gigawatt partnership announced last cycle), Marvell on networking-and-interconnect silicon for AI clusters, and AMD on the MI400-trajectory plus Instinct-platform growth. The four-company-driver framing is consistent with the broader market structure: the AI-chip layer is multi-stack competitive rather than NVIDIA-monopoly, and the multi-stack dynamic itself drives total-market growth.
The competitive context is the custom-ASIC trajectory. TrendForce projects 44.6% custom-ASIC growth versus 16.1% merchant-GPU growth in 2026, with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta diverting procurement to internal silicon designs. NVIDIA still holds 70-80% of AI accelerator market by revenue with Blackwell and the upcoming Vera Rubin platform ahead on raw performance. Anthropic moving toward its own AI chips for Claude is the signal that NVIDIA's largest customers are planning to escape NVIDIA dependence at scale. The combined picture — robust total market growth, NVIDIA-dominant share but compressing, custom-ASIC growth outpacing on percentage basis — is what the BofA $1.3T forecast embeds as its operative model.
Bank of America Research — 2026 global chip market forecast $1.3 trillion → · CNBC — BofA AI chip forecast 2026 NVIDIA Broadcom Marvell AMD → · TrendForce — Custom ASIC versus merchant GPU 2026 forecast →