The semiconductor industry is entering another round of price increases, pushed by both supply-demand pressure and higher costs.
According to 21 Finance and other media outlets, a number of semiconductor companies in China and overseas have sent price adjustment notices to customers since the start of August. Analog chips and RF chips have become the main areas where the latest wave of adjustments is showing up. Customer notices that have circulated publicly show STMicroelectronics, Analog Devices and Maxscend all set new supply prices for the second half of the year.
STMicroelectronics launches its third price increase of 2026
STMicroelectronics, a global supplier of power semiconductors and microcontrollers, serves industrial, automotive electronics and consumer electronics markets. The chipmaker, registered in Geneva, Switzerland, has already started its third product price adjustment of 2026.
A notice sent to customers shows it will carry out another price increase on Aug. 23, covering several product lines.
In the notice, STMicroelectronics President of Sales and Marketing Jerome Roux said semiconductor demand across multiple industries has risen sharply for several consecutive quarters, placing sustained pressure on the global supply chain. He said transportation, energy, raw materials and manufacturing services across the supply chain have all gone through major price adjustments as a result.
Jiemian News reported at the end of May that STMicroelectronics had sent a price adjustment notice to customers, saying some product prices would be raised starting June 28. That followed an earlier increase announced on March 24. Before that, other international power semiconductor companies including Infineon and Texas Instruments had also issued price increase notices. In China, MCU makers Zhongwei Semiconductor and Nationstech had also moved prices higher.
ADI to implement a portfolio-wide increase in September
Analog Devices, or ADI, has also joined the latest round of price adjustments. ADI is a major global supplier of analog signal processing chips, with products widely used in industrial control, communications and high-reliability military equipment.
According to a formal letter sent to customers, the company will implement a price adjustment across its full product portfolio on Sept. 13, 2026. It marks ADI's second increase this year, after the first one took effect on Feb. 1.
In the notice, Chief Customer Officer Katsu Nakamura wrote: 「As we continue to pursue additional supply and expand capacity, the business is facing unprecedented broad-based demand growth while also bearing significant cost pressure. At the same time, inflationary pressure and manufacturing costs across the entire semiconductor supply ecosystem continue to rise.」
Maxscend raises prices on its full RF product line
Chinese RF chip maker Maxscend has also joined the latest wave. Jiangsu Maxscend Microelectronics Co., Ltd. is a domestic supplier of RF front-end chips, with products used in smartphones and wireless communications equipment.
On Aug. 10, Maxscend issued a product price adjustment notice saying it would raise supply prices for its full RF product lineup starting Sept. 1. The letter said that since the start of 2026, the global semiconductor supply chain has remained under pressure, while prices for upstream raw materials including silicon wafers, non-ferrous metals, packaging materials and chemicals have continued to climb. At the same time, wafer foundry and packaging and testing capacity has become tighter. Combined with supply shortages triggered by a surge in AI computing demand, chip manufacturing costs have kept rising, and the previous pricing system can no longer cover growing operating costs.
This is Maxscend's first price increase of the year.
Nationstech to raise some MCU prices by 10% to 20%
On Aug. 11, Jiemian News learned from Nationstech that the company will raise prices on some products by 10% to 20% starting Oct. 1. The adjustment mainly covers high-performance MCUs used in industrial applications, AI power supplies and digital power supplies.
Nationstech told Jiemian News that lead times for some comparable products from international peers have generally lengthened recently, shortages have appeared in the market, and customer demand for domestic substitutes is rising. At the same time, growing AI-related demand has squeezed part of the upstream capacity, changing the supply-demand balance.
Price pressure shifts to mature-node chips
Compared with the semiconductor price increases seen in the first half of the year, the latest wave has shifted toward mature-node products, while gains in memory chips have moderated and moved into high-level fluctuations. AI computing demand is consuming not only leading-edge process capacity but also a large share of 8-inch mature wafer capacity, squeezing supply available for RF chips, industrial analog chips and automotive-grade MCUs. Even without a recovery in end demand for consumer electronics, tight mature-node foundry capacity is directly lifting manufacturing costs across the chain.
In the first half of the year, price increases were first led by AI memory products such as HBM and server DRAM. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron took the lead in sharply lifting memory contract prices, and some quarterly increases in server memory were very large, making memory the core engine of the move. The effect then spread to analog chips, power semiconductors and passive components, forming a pattern in which memory led and other categories followed. At that stage, AI's pull on mature-node capacity had not yet fully emerged, and price increases were driven more by an order surge in the products themselves.
Suppliers tie higher prices to supply assurances
Some analysts believe capacity expansion cycles for analog and power semiconductors generally take 18 to 24 months, making it hard for new short-term capacity to match incremental demand from industrial markets and AI-related applications. That could keep prices firm for a period. At the same time, downstream manufacturers have a ceiling on how much cost they can absorb. If price increases continue to intensify, customers may offset pressure by switching part numbers or adjusting inventory plans, which in turn would limit how much further chipmakers can lift prices.
For downstream customers, repeated price adjustments mean higher procurement costs. But the notices issued by major original manufacturers have in most cases tied the increases to supply guarantees, indicating that part of the additional revenue will be used to absorb costs and part will go into capacity expansion to ease supply chain strain.
In the near term, prices for analog, RF and power chips are unlikely to loosen much. The market is not moving in only one direction, though. Downstream cost tolerance and shifts in global macro demand will remain variables affecting where semiconductor prices go next.
This article was originally published by the WeChat account of Jiemian News and written by Song Jianan.