应用材料 CEO 谈 50 亿美元 EPIC 中心的商业逻辑：2030 年 WFE 份额提升超 2 个百分点

Last week, Applied Materials held a grand unveiling ceremony for its $5 billion EPIC Center, which aims to bring chipmakers, equipment suppliers, and researchers together to accelerate semiconductor R&D and commercialization. The next day, at its investor breakfast session ahead of SEMICON West 2026, the financial strategy behind this center made more sense.

The figures presented speak loud and clear: By 2030, Applied Materials expects to gain more than two percentage points of wafer fab equipment (WFE) market share compared to calendar 2025, while maintaining gross margins of 54% and operating margins of 40% on a non-GAAP basis. The company also projects $2 billion in revenue from its eBeam equipment portfolio in calendar year 2026 and service revenue growth of more than 20% this calendar year, with service revenue exceeding $12 billion by calendar year 2030.

EPIC would be a strong catalyst for this growth. While AI demand is already expected to drive significant growth, a co-innovation lab like EPIC can help Applied Materials align with emerging architectures and get designed in early, ensuring that when those technologies scale, Applied Materials’ equipment is already built into the production line.

Just before the unveiling ceremony on Oct. 12, 2026, EE Times sat down with Applied Materials’ CEO Gary Dickerson to talk about the EPIC Center, the thinking behind it, and how it would operate. He told us, “AI is the most important race in the global economy.”  He added, “We will bring companies through the technology stack—all the leading companies, from system companies, design companies, chip companies, material companies, and universities—to accelerate innovation, and it really is accelerating tokens per second per watt from concept to commercialization.”

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The key focus of EPIC, he said, is to change the way we innovate. “EPIC is going to bring all of these innovators together, co-locating them together to accelerate innovation.”

The interview is available in full here:

In the interview, he also addressed how Applied Materials would work with partners and customers at EPIC, saying, “We work with all of these companies that are competing with each other, but they’re all in a race.

They are all in a race to have better AI compute performance and power; also, a race to be able to ramp the number of good chips per wafer and yield, to close the demand supply gap that exists in the industry today.

And so, for us, there’s a focus on innovation velocity but also trusted innovation. We firewall the teams that are connecting with each one of these different companies, and at the foundation of Applied Materials’ strategy is trusted innovation.”

Supporting the co-innovation theme, Applied Materials’ president of its semiconductor products group Prabu Raja said in a press statement, “Materials innovation has outgrown serial development—at today’s atomic-scale dimensions, many materials and materials interfaces behave in entirely new ways, and making them work at industry scale demands coordinated development and integrated solutions.

He said EPIC provides a place where materials, process technology, and equipment can be innovated in parallel, increasing the success rate of new materials and technologies.

“Because our customers’ own engineers help optimize the technology before it ever reaches their factory, what leaves EPIC arrives at the fab ready to ramp to high performance and high yield sooner.”

Applied Materials said it expects the EPIC operating model to deliver returns for both sides of the partnerships. Chipmakers gain early access to next-generation materials and equipment, while Applied Materials gains visibility into emerging technology challenges across several generations, informing where the company directs its R&D investments to create value for customers and have its systems and services designed in.

Based on its expectations for semiconductor industry growth, Applied Materials said it is investing to more than double its R&D lab and manufacturing capacity from current levels by 2030.  To date, the company has announced 15 EPIC Center partnerships with leading chipmakers, systems companies, equipment partners, and universities. It has also recently expanded its manufacturing infrastructure in Austin, Texas, Singapore, and Treviso, Italy.

Also read:

Applied Materials, BESI Push Die-to-Wafer Hybrid Bonding Toward High-Volume Manufacturing

Applied Materials, CEA-Leti Deepen Ties with Specialty Chip Lab

Applied Materials Bets $5B on a New Model for Chip Innovation

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Nitin Dahad

Nitin Dahad is executive editor of EE Times. An electronic engineering graduate from City University, he’s been an engineer, journalist and entrepreneur. He was part of ARC International’s startup team and took it public, and he co-founded a publication called The Chilli in the early 2000s. Nitin has also worked with National Semiconductor, GEC Plessey Semiconductors, Dialog Semiconductor, Marconi Instruments, Coresonic, Center for Integrated Photonics, IDENT Technology and Jennic. Nitin also held a role with government promoting U.K. technology globally in the U.S., Brazil, Middle East and Africa, and India.  Follow Nitin on LinkedIn