Applied Materials Increases Stake in Besi to 20% as Surging Hybrid Bonding Orders Drive Deeper Partnership
nashnova research
Applied Materials is lifting its stake in Dutch packaging-equipment maker Besi from 9% to roughly 20%, driven by Besi's 96% year-on-year order surge in Q3 — this means advanced packaging is crossing from lab concept to a real-money capacity race.
Why is Applied Materials doubling its stake?
Besi's Q3 orders hit €342.6 million, up 96.1% year-on-year and 17% quarter-on-quarter, well above analysts' €298 million estimate.
Revenue more than doubled year-on-year to €283.4 million, pulled by hybrid bonding — joining two chips directly, face-to-face — plus photonics and data-center demand.
This means → Applied Materials is not betting on a future promise; it is chasing orders that already landed — the inflection point is here, and the stake increase follows the numbers.
How strong is the hybrid-bonding order wave?
Besi disclosed that hybrid-bonding orders in the first nine months of 2026 already exceed twice the full-year 2025 total, with cumulative unit demand topping 215 systems.
In plain terms = last year's entire sales volume was surpassed in nine months — customers are not "testing the waters," they are racing to lock capacity.
Demand is converging from three lines — hybrid bonding, data centers, and AI compute — and the simultaneous ramp creates a compounding effect.
How deep does the partnership run?
The collaboration dates to 2020, when the two firms set up a joint hybrid-bonding R&D center in Singapore and later launched the Kinex integrated wafer-to-wafer hybrid-bonding system.
Applied Materials completed the initial 9% stake in April 2025; on October 1 the two expanded their scope to cover thermocompression bonding, next-generation 3D chip integration, photonic interconnects, and new platforms such as chip-on-wafer and chip-on-panel.
Besi also joined Applied Materials' EPIC research center in Silicon Valley — a facility with roughly $5 billion in planned capital spending and founding partners including TSMC, Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.
This reflects a tie-up that goes far beyond a financial investment — Applied Materials is using equity to lock in the most critical equipment partner in the packaging chain, from R&D all the way to production capacity.
Is there a ceiling on the stake?
Applied Materials stated explicitly that it does not plan to raise the stake above 20% and is not seeking a Besi board seat.
Closing is subject to the expiry of a U.S. antitrust review period; the purchase price was not disclosed.
This means → the goal is technology synergy and supply-chain lock-in, not control — 20% is deep enough to bind the relationship without triggering a full-takeover regulatory threshold.
Orders are surging — what could go wrong?
The timeline for large-scale commercial adoption of hybrid bonding in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) remains unclear; legacy bonding processes still dominate current volume production.
Besi expects Q4 revenue to be roughly flat versus Q3, within a 5% band; some customers are aligning equipment deliveries with first-half 2027 capacity ramps.
In plain terms = a surge in orders does not equal immediate shipments — customers have placed orders but are queuing for production lines to come online, and the real volume window may not open until H1 2027.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。