in4ma research says PCB prices up to 40 percent higher, lead times stretching, and prepayment demands spreading along the supply chain
Koenigswinter, Germany — The current shortages in printed circuit boards, laminates and specialty raw materials are not a cyclical blip. They are the direct consequence of a capital expenditure wave from a small group of hyperscalers whose 2026 spending commitments exceed the annual revenue of the entire global EMS industry, according to new research from in4ma and EMSNOW.
Who are the hyperscalers?
“Hyperscaler” describes the handful of companies that build, own and operate data-center infrastructure at global scale. In the current AI cycle, they are the dominant buyers of accelerators, HBM, advanced substrates and high-layer-count PCBs — which is precisely why they are crowding out capacity for traditional electronics.
The four large US players have guided to the following 2026 capital expenditure:
Company Platform 2026 capex guidance
Amazon AWS ~USD 200 bn
Alphabet Google Cloud ~USD 175–185 bn
Meta Internal AI (no public cloud) ~USD 115–145 bn
Microsoft Azure ~USD 120–190 bn (fiscal vs. calendar basis)
Combined guidance amounts to roughly USD 700–725 billion for 2026, against approximately USD 410 billion in 2025 (Hyperscaler Capex Tracker).
Below the big four sit Oracle (OCI), xAI, OpenAI/Stargate, Anthropic, CoreWeave, Nebius, Lambda, and Apple for internal silicon and services. In China, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu and Huawei Cloud form a parallel bloc — significant for European buyers because their procurement runs largely through domestic substrate and PCB suppliers, tightening Asian capacity from a second direction.
How long the surge lasts
Assessments from Moody’s and Reuters place the acute phase of triple-digit growth between 2024 and 2027, with 2026 as the peak-intensity year. Beyond that, most credible forecasters expect the buildout to continue at a decelerating, more normalized pace through 2030–2032. The spread in the 2027–2029 projections reflect genuine execution risk rather than analyst disagreement over demand.
The bottleneck is no longer silicon alone
The scale and the constraints are illustrated by the largest project currently under discussion: a 10-gigawatt campus in Pike County, southern Ohio, on former Department of Energy uranium enrichment land, developed by SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy. Full buildout is estimated at more than USD 500 billion at current prices for chips, labor and power, with an 800-megawatt first phase targeted for 2028 under a 20-year lease to OpenAI (Reuters, Datacenter Dynamics). Nvidia is reported to be in talks to guarantee approximately USD 250 billion of the lease and construction financing, with a separate arrangement of around USD 350 billion under discussion for chip purchases; terms are not final and neither company has commented. SB Energy is investing USD 33.3 billion, funded under the US–Japan trade agreement, in 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas generation that will be owned by the US government. (Bloomberg)
Three hurdles define the pace of the entire sector: securing guaranteed power, deploying direct-to-chip liquid cooling, and financing projects at sovereign scale.
Europe and the local footprint
Europe’s densest cluster sits ten miles west of Heathrow. Slough hosts an estimated 30 to 40 large facilities, owned and operated by Equinix, Digital Realty and others, serving Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft. A Cambridge-led preprint quantifies a “data heat island effect,” estimating that land surface temperatures rise by 2°C on average after an AI data center begins operations, and by as much as 9°C in extreme cases, with more than 340 million people potentially affected worldwide. Job creation notwithstanding, local acceptance is becoming a planning variable. (the Guardian)
Who is building the racks
in4ma and EMSNOW research shows the buildout is overwhelmingly Taiwanese: Foxconn, Wistron, Quanta Computer, Wiwynn, Inventec and Accton Technology. In the Western world, only Celestica is outperforming the market.
The profitability picture is more sobering than the volume headlines suggest:
- Foxconn — AI racks deliver volume and working-capital intensity, not structurally better margins. Inventories rose 31 percent and total debt 34 percent year-on-year; net margin stands at 2.3 percent.
- Wistron — Revenue grew 108.4 percent, but net margin of 1.25 percent is the thinnest in the top-ten peer set. With 62 percent of revenue from datacenter products, Wistron is buying volume share at very low incremental profitability.
- Inventec — Revenue up only 6.9 percent with a 55 percent datacenter share, but pre-tax profit up 30.4 percent. A deliberate margin strategy rather than a share strategy.
What it means for PCB and substrate suppliers
AI server boards require 20-plus layer counts, low-loss M8/M9-class laminates and ABF substrates, drawing on the same lines and material streams that automotive, industrial and consumer electronics depend on. When four companies commit more than USD 700 billion in a single year, marginal capacity follows the money. Some PCB manufacturers have already informed existing customers that they will no longer supply standard boards, accepting only AI server work.
The laminate industry faces the same squeeze. Demand for fine glass cloth in styles 1080, 106 and 104 is rising sharply, as is demand for T-glass and other low-Dk fabrics required for signal integrity in AI servers. Very-low-profile and high-speed copper foils are in short supply as well. As capacity can only be sold once, glass yarn, glass fabric, copper foil and base material manufacturers are focusing on the products with better margins as well. Production disruptions at major resin suppliers have added cost pressure and contributed to PCB price increases of up to 40 percent in early 2026: SABIC accounts for roughly 70 percent of global high-purity PPE resin supply.
The industry expects AI-driven demand to extend through 2030, with supply tightness persisting through 2028. This supports pricing and margins for high-end PCBs before conditions gradually ease and become more competitive after 2030.
Payment terms are shifting
As delivery times extend, suppliers are increasingly demanding partial or full prepayment along the entire supply chain. The motive is twofold: discouraging speculative over-ordering and securing liquidity as a precaution. Whether prepayment also dampens the bullwhip effect typical of allocation phases remains to be seen.
About in4ma
in4ma market research is analyzing the global EMS/ODM market together with EMSNOW under the brand “EMS/ODM Global 100” and the global PCB industry under the brand Data4PCB.
Media contact Dieter G. Weiss, in4ma market research [email protected]
