Top 10 Global Fabless IC Design Houses Post 73% YoY Revenue Growth in 2Q26; AMD Breaks into Top Three

September 11, 2026 -- According to TrendForce’s latest IC design industry research, expanding AI applications continued to drive demand for GPUs, CPUs, ASICs, and interconnect products. Consequently, combined revenue of the world’s top 10 fabless IC design companies surged 73% YoY to more than US$141.45 billion in 2Q26. 

NVIDIA remained firmly in first place, while AMD moved up to third as CPUs gained strategic importance in agentic AI applications. Qualcomm slipped to fourth amid weakness in its smartphone business.

NVIDIA’s 2Q26 revenue rose 99% YoY to nearly $91.16 billion, increasing its share of the top 10 companies’ combined revenue to 64%. In addition to hyperscale CSPs, NeoCloud operators, and sovereign AI projects, enterprise customers contributed significantly to the company’s revenue.

TrendForce observes that NVIDIA has recently expanded its NVLink Fusion ecosystem, enabling it to engage with the ASIC market. The company’s investment in MediaTek is intended to help custom XPU customers improve interoperability with existing NVIDIA infrastructure while also laying the groundwork for future automotive AI applications. NVIDIA’s earlier investment in Marvell similarly included NVLink Fusion as a collaboration area.

Agentic AI elevates CPU’s strategic role as optical interconnects become critical to scaling compute

Broadcom ranked second in 2Q26. The first ASIC it helped design for OpenAI and Google’s TPU 8i began shipping during the quarter, while its networking business grew rapidly alongside XPU deployments. Revenue surged 112% YoY to more than $18.89 billion. Its six major custom chip customers, including frontier model developers such as Anthropic and OpenAI, are expected to continue driving XPU demand.

AMD moved into third place as the rise of agentic AI renewed the strategic importance of CPUs. Its 2Q26 revenue exceeded $11.53 billion, while data center CPU revenue reached a record high for the fifth consecutive quarter. The company also continued to gain share from Intel in the x86 server market.

Rapid growth in interconnect demand lifted Marvell’s 2Q26 revenue to $2.63 billion, placing it sixth. The company maintains a leading position in PAM4 DSPs, with strong demand for 800G DSPs and a rapid ramp-up in 1.6T products. Marvell has also reached an agreement with Google in its custom silicon business, which is expected to make a significant revenue contribution in fiscal 2029.

Mobile chip leaders expand their AI strategies

In 2Q26, Qualcomm faced ongoing challenges in its smartphone chip segment and a reduced share of modem chips in the newest iPhone model. Nevertheless, its automotive division has sustained double-digit year-over-year growth for 23 straight quarters, helping to offset a part of the decline in smartphones. The company earned over $8.5 billion in revenue. Recently, Qualcomm has also returned to the data center market, boosting diversification within its QCT division.

MediaTek ranked fifth with revenue of approximately $4.81 billion, also weighed down by its smartphone business. However, the company raised its outlook for AI ASICs and expects data center revenue to exceed $2 billion in 2026. It has also increased its estimate for ASIC’s serviceable available market to $80 billion by 2028.

Consumer IC design houses benefit from early pull in demand while seeking new growth drivers

Realtek ranked seventh with 2Q26 revenue of nearly $1.19 billion. With PC market conditions expected to weaken further in the second half of 2026, the company plans to leverage its existing IP strengths to expand into the server market, including 10G Ethernet and server control-plane switches.

MPS ranked eighth with revenue of $981 million, primarily driven by AI-related power management solutions. The company continues to expand capacity as it transitions toward becoming a broader semiconductor solutions provider.

Novatek ranked ninth with 2Q26 revenue of $907 million, supported by early pull in demand from customers. SoCs now account for more than half of its revenue, and the company continues to invest in edge AI-related machine-vision SoC applications.

OmniVision ranked tenth, with semiconductor design revenue of $838 million. Although higher memory prices weighed on its smartphone and automotive CIS businesses, emerging applications such as action cameras posted strong growth. The company is also expanding its analog IC portfolio into EICs for optical communications, including transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs) and driver ICs.

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