TAIPEI (TVBS News) — The global market for Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF) substrates faces a widening supply shortage driven by accelerating demand from artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and low-earth-orbit satellites. The crunch positions Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain as a key beneficiary, industry analysts said as Computex Taipei entered its final day on Friday (June 5).
Industry estimates project the supply gap will reach 8% in 2026 and expand to 22% by 2030, highlighting structural constraints in ABF substrate production. Strong demand for Nvidia's (輝達) next-generation Rubin platform is driving the imbalance. A surge in ASICs from major cloud service providers is compounding the shortage as companies ramp up in-house silicon development.
Chen Shin-hui (陳馨蕙), associate research fellow at Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院), said the shortage reflects a structural shift rather than a short-term disruption. She cited rising supply and logistics costs alongside sustained AI demand. Extended lead times for DRAM and CPUs last year triggered advance purchasing, which boosted demand for PCBs and ABF substrates, she said.
On the supply side, expansion has lagged due to constraints in key upstream materials. High-end AI chip packaging is moving toward larger substrate sizes and higher layer counts, increasing material consumption and limiting available capacity. A key bottleneck is low-CTE fiberglass cloth, dominated by a small number of U.S. and Japanese suppliers.
Taiwan's integrated semiconductor ecosystem positions its companies to benefit from the trend, Chiu said. The shift strengthens their role in advanced packaging as the industry moves to secure the next wave of technology development. ◼
