Minutes on AIPCB Equipment and Drill Bits: The breakout inflection point in 2027 is confirmed.
Against the industrial wave of continuously exploding demand for AI computing power, PCB, as the core physical carrier for chips, servers and computing power systems, is undergoing a capacity restructuring driven by the leap of technical specifications.
As the "shovel sellers" for computing power expansion, upstream PCB production equipment and core consumable drill bits are the first to see a surge in demand by orders of magnitude.
Combined with industrial data and the deduction of supply and demand pattern, 2027 will become the outbreak inflection point with the largest supply-demand gap and the strongest performance elasticity in the industry. Among them, the drill bit consumables, with the logic of "rising in both volume and price", show stronger investment alpha than the equipment side.
I. Market Space: AI Drives Incremental Expansion, Equipment Market Approaches RMB 100 Billion in 2027
The output value expansion of AI PCB is the source of demand for the entire industrial chain.
According to industrial calculations, the global AI PCB output value will reach RMB 412 billion, RMB 841 billion and RMB 1816 billion respectively from 2025 to 2027, maintaining a doubling growth rate every year, with a net increase of over RMB 1.4 trillion in output value in two years.
Calculated according to the industry rule of 80% investment-output ratio and RMB 5.5 billion equipment input for every RMB 10 billion production capacity, the new equipment demand in the AI PCB field from 2026 to 2027 is close to RMB 1 trillion. On an annual basis, it will rise rapidly from RMB 158 billion in 2025 to RMB 670 billion in 2027, fully synchronized with the output value growth.
It is worth noting that this round of growth is a pure incremental logic — the equipment demand in the traditional non-AI PCB field will remain stable at around RMB 30 billion per year, and will not shrink due to the diversion of AI capital expenditure.
Superimposed with the explosive growth on the AI side, the total global PCB equipment market size will reach RMB 589 billion in 2026, with a year-on-year increase of about 30%; the total size will jump to RMB 964 billion in 2027, and the year-on-year growth rate will expand to more than 60%.
From the perspective of industrial verification, the accumulated capital expenditure announced by the world's leading PCB manufacturers has exceeded RMB 1 trillion, of which more than 80% is invested in the equipment side, which is basically consistent with the top-down calculation results.
II. Segment Breakdown: Supply and Demand Mismatch in Four Core Equipment, Drilling Track Has the Largest Gap
The four core links of PCB production — drilling, circuit, exposure and inspection — will directly benefit from this round of capacity expansion.
Calculated according to the equipment investment proportion of each link (35% for drilling, 20% for circuit, 15% for exposure, 10% for inspection), the equipment demand of the four links in 2027 will reach RMB 338 billion, RMB 193 billion, RMB 145 billion and RMB 97 billion respectively.
Compared with the supply side, as of 2026, the capacity of the world's mainstream suppliers can only cover less than two-thirds of the 2027 demand: the total capacity of drilling equipment is about RMB 211 billion, circuit equipment about RMB 100 billion, exposure equipment about RMB 75 billion, and inspection equipment about RMB 60 billion.
Even if all manufacturers generally plan to expand their production capacity by 50%-100% in 2027, considering the release cycle and ramp-up rhythm of equipment production capacity, 2027 will still be in a tight supply-demand balance state. The order scheduling of leading equipment manufacturers is expected to be extended, and their bargaining power will continue to improve.
As the core front-end process of PCB manufacturing, drilling equipment has the largest demand scale and the most significant capacity gap, making it the sub-track with the highest elasticity on the equipment side.
III. Drill Bit Consumables: Resonance of Three Logics
If PCB equipment is the beta market of one-time capital expenditure, then drill bits, as the core one-time consumable in the PCB drilling link, will go through an independent alpha market of triple resonance of "volume increase + consumption rise + price hike", which is the sub-sector with the highest elasticity and strongest sustainability in this round of AI PCB boom.
1. Doubling of Hole Count: Layer Upgrade Opens Demand Ceiling
The PCB for AI servers has been greatly increased from 12-16 layers of traditional servers to 24-40 layers, and the number of drilled holes on a single motherboard exceeds 100,000, reaching 5-10 times that of ordinary servers, which directly amplifies the basic consumption of drill bits from the base.
2. Sharp Drop in Service Life: Substrate Upgrade Drives Up Unit Consumption
In order to match the high-frequency and high-speed performance, AI PCB substrates are upgraded from the mainstream M7/M8 to the higher-order M9 material, and the hardness and wear resistance of the board are significantly improved, resulting in a sharp drop in the service life of a single drill bit from 500-1000 holes to 100-200 holes, a decrease of more than 80%.
This means that processing the same number of holes will increase the consumption of drill bits by 4-5 times, which is the core variable driving the outbreak of demand.
3. High Premium Highlighted: High Aspect Ratio Drives Up Average Price
The trend of higher layers and micro-holes of AI PCB has spawned demand for special drill bits with high aspect ratio. Such high-end drill bits have higher technical barriers and much higher prices than ordinary drill bits, driving the product structure upgrade and average price increase of the entire drill bit market, forming a virtuous cycle of "rising in both volume and price".
The continuous expansion of the supply-demand gap further strengthens the price increase logic.
Calculations show that the supply-demand gap in the global drill bit market will reach 100 million units, 700 million units and 1 billion units respectively from 2026 to 2028, among which the supply of high-end AI-specific drill bits is particularly tight, and manufacturers with high-end production capacity will fully enjoy the shortage dividend.
IV. Competition Pattern: Highly Concentrated Oligopoly Market, Leaders Fully Enjoy Industry Dividend
Both the PCB equipment and drill bit tracks present a highly concentrated competition pattern, especially in the drill bit field, the head effect is more significant.
In 2025, the CR5 of the global PCB drill bit industry reached 75.7%, among which Dintai High-Tech ranked first with a market share of 29%, followed by China Tungsten High-Tech with 21%. The two domestic leaders together account for nearly half of the market, together with manufacturers such as Japan's Youneng and Dianpoint Technology, forming a stable oligopoly competition pattern.
Under the background of explosive demand, the capacity expansion rhythm of industry leaders directly determines the evolution of the supply gap.
Taking Dintai High-Tech as an example, its annualized effective production capacity is expected to grow from 1.1 billion units in 2025 to 3.9 billion units in 2028; the total effective supply of major global manufacturers will grow from 3.8 billion units to 9.3 billion units, with a compound annual growth rate of about 34%.
However, even at the fastest capacity expansion speed, it is still difficult to match the explosive growth on the demand side. The industry will not fall into a price war. Leading enterprises will fully enjoy the performance elasticity brought by the simultaneous rise of volume and price on the premise of stable market share, and continue to promote the domestic substitution of high-end products.
V. Investment Rhythm and Risks: Grasp the Certainty Window Before 2027
From the perspective of investment timing, 2026-2027 is the stage with the highest certainty of industry growth: the shipment volume of downstream AI servers continues to rise, the capacity expansion of PCB manufacturers is intensively implemented, the supply-demand gap between equipment and drill bits continues to expand, and the performance realization is high.
Among them, 2027 is the inflection point with the most prominent supply-demand contradiction, and also the peak interval of industry prosperity.
However, it should be noted that there is great uncertainty in the growth after 2028, and the core variable is whether the capital expenditure in the AI field can maintain the current high intensity.
If the pace of computing power construction slows down and the momentum of PCB capacity expansion weakens, the demand growth rate of equipment and consumables will drop rapidly.
Therefore, the volume release rhythm of the next-generation AI server cabinets such as NVIDIA's Rubin series (VR200, Ultra) is the core leading indicator to observe the changes in industry supply and demand. It is expected that a clearer judgment on the 2028 market trend can be formed by the end of 2027.
In addition, two types of risks need to be paid attention to: first, technical route risk. If there is a reform in PCB manufacturing technology (such as the popularization of non-hole process and new substrates), the demand for drilling and drill bits may be weakened; second, the risk of capacity release exceeding expectations. If the manufacturer's capacity expansion progress is faster than the demand ramp-up, the gap may narrow in advance, affecting the price elasticity.
(The above content is sorted out based on public research information, for reference only, and does not constitute any suggestion.)
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Gelonghui Mine Detection Zone" (ID: glh-tlq), author: Chen Jiaming, published with authorization from 36Kr.