The silicon guilds and their dubious fortunes¶
Or how to separate the genuinely rich from the merely loud
The chip market resembles nothing so much as a particularly rowdy Ankh-Morpork tavern on payday: everyone is shouting about their prospects, coins are changing hands at alarming speeds, and somewhere in the corner a few sober wizards are quietly counting the real money. The cast rarely changes; only the numbers do.
The clerk’s brief¶
From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes
Compiled July 2026. Newest first; the older figures settle into the guild accounts at the end. His Lordship is reminded that all numbers below were supplied by people with an interest in them.
January 2026: The year is counted, and one guild crosses a line¶
Gartner’s preliminary results, published January 2026, put 2025 semiconductor revenue at 793 billion dollars, up 21 per cent, with Nvidia the first vendor ever past 100 billion dollars in annual chip sales and forecasts pointing to a trillion-dollar market by 2028. One guild member now books roughly an eighth of the entire trade. The clerks note that the last time a single institution held that share of anything in Ankh-Morpork, it was the Patrician, and he at least publishes no forecasts.
August 2025: A tariff with a door in it¶
In August 2025 the US president announced a 100 per cent tariff on imported semiconductors, with an exemption for companies building fabs in the United States; TSMC’s pledged US investment stood at 165 billion dollars, and Apple added another 100 billion to its domestic commitments at the same podium. The clerks read the design plainly: the tariff is not meant to be paid, it is meant to be escaped, and the price of escape is a fab. Protection rackets, they note, have operated on this principle for centuries, generally with less paperwork.
May 2025: The diffusion rule dies before it lives¶
On 13 May 2025 the US Commerce Department rescinded the AI diffusion rule two days before it would have taken effect, replacing tiered country limits on AI chips with guidance, including a warning against use of Huawei’s advanced processors anywhere in the world. Export control policy reversed within a single administration cycle while fab timelines run in decades. The clerks observe that the players must place ten-year bets under rules with a shelf life of months, and that this asymmetry, more than any tariff, is what the guild accounts keep paying for.
The guild accounts¶
The accounts have kept one shape through every entry: the money pools at the monopolist and its toolmakers, the challenger gains share in proportion to customer resentment, the fallen incumbent burns capital waiting for foundry customers, and the landlord collects rent throughout. What changed across 2025 and into 2026 is the scale and the politics: a single vendor past 100 billion dollars as of January 2026, and market access now negotiated fab by fab under tariff and export regimes that reverse faster than a fab can be roofed. The clerks’ standing assessment: the fortunes remain real, the moats remain rentable, and the sober wizards in the corner have started counting in geography as well as gold.