www.eenewseurope.com, Jun. 13, 2025 –
The latest listing of the top ten fabless chip designers is showing the increasing importance of power management for AI. While Nvidia continues to dominate the listings with over half the market, the push to AI is also driving more demand for power management chips.
The latest data from TrendForce shows that revenue for the global IC design industry reached US$77.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 6% on the previous quarter ana new record high.
This growth was fueled by early stocking ahead of new U.S. tariffs on electronics and the ongoing construction of AI data centres around the world, which sustained strong chip demand despite the traditional off-season.
This has driven revenue at US power management chip designer Monolithic POwer System (MPS) to a record high with Q1 revenue of $638 million and the number ten position, driven by demand for power management ICs in AI data centres. Its computing and storage segments saw significant expansion.
Nvidia remained the top-ranking IC design company, with Q1 revenue of $42.3bn, up 12% on the quarter and 72% year-on-year as a result of increasing shipments of its Blackwell GPU.
Qualcomm at number two saw revenue of $9.47bn, with a 6% decline partly as a result of concerns over Apple’s growing in-house chip development further dampened the outlook, However it is actively expanding into AI smartphones, AI PCs, automotive, and IoT sectors but is facing competition from Mediatek in fifth and Realtek in seventh.
In third place, Broadcom’s semiconductor revenue hit a record $8.34 billion in Q2, up 15% YoY. The company continues to expand its high-speed interconnect for AI servers with the industry’s first 102.4 Tbps co-packaged optics (CPO) switch and custom AI ASIC contracts with several hyperscaler and AI factory developers.