(Bloomberg) — Advantest Corp. is expected to benefit from a boom in AI development that will make chips more complex in the coming years, increasing demand for the semiconductor test equipment it supplies, the company’s chief said.
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CEO Douglas Lefever, dismissing concerns that investors may be overestimating future demand, told Bloomberg Television that AI was not only driving investment in data centers but would also fundamentally boost other industries, including automobiles. On Wednesday, Advantest shares rose the most since February after Lefever’s company outlined higher-than-projected three-year operating profit targets.
Advantest, the world’s largest supplier of chip testing equipment, said it aims to increase its share of the chip testing equipment market to at least 58% from the current 54%. Chipmakers will need more rigorous testing to reduce bad production batches as the architecture becomes more sophisticated, Lefever said.
“They need to do thorough testing on these devices to make sure they don’t throw them away in the end,” he said. “There is a lot of new test content – we say test times, test inserts – and there is also more emphasis on the beginning, when they are individual matrices, before they come together.”
China will continue to be an important market for the company and the industry despite US efforts to contain the country’s semiconductor industry, he added. Advantest remains focused on serving this market, said the CEO. It accounted for 37% of Advantest’s sales in the March quarter.
–With assistance from Shery Ahn and Haidi Lun.
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