Bernstein has singled out four Japanese chipmaking suppliers it considers best positioned to capture demand tied to advanced semiconductor manufacturing and AI infrastructure buildout. The firms highlighted are Hoya, Advantest, Kokusai and Renesas, each of which the research house says has direct exposure to key technology transitions including extreme ultraviolet (EUV) mask blank demand, SoC tester requirements for AI chips, DRAM capacity expansion and data-center power conversion for GPUs.
Hoya: Bernstein points to Hoya's dominant role in EUV mask blanks, noting the company effectively controls 100% share at TSMC. The research house expects the market for 3nm technology to remain robust next year and anticipates that phase-shift EUV masks for 2nm nodes will become a subsequent growth engine after 2027. Bernstein models Hoya's mask blanks business to expand at a 17% compound annual growth rate over the coming three years, with gains coming from both higher average selling prices and volume increases. Separately, the firm expects HAMR adoption to lift Hoya's market share in hard disk drive substrate to around 57% within three years, up from roughly 40% today.
Advantest: Bernstein recently moved Advantest to an Outperform rating as it sees fresh drivers beyond the company's exposure to Nvidia GPU testing. The firm reports Advantest now holds approximately 66% share of the SoC tester market, an increase of 10 percentage points year-over-year. Bernstein has revised its total addressable market estimate for SoC testers to $8.7-9.5 billion for calendar year 2026, reflecting clearer visibility into AI chip demand. Management has raised capacity targets to 10,000 SoC tester units annually by the end of 2028, up from a previous goal of 7,500, a change Bernstein attributes to a growing AI customer base and more complex test configurations. Advantest has also taken its first mass-production orders in silicon photonics for co-packaged optics, which introduce new layers of test complexity.
Kokusai: Bernstein highlights Kokusai's leadership in batch thermal processing equipment - covering ALD, diffusion and oxidation - and says the company commands a high share across the three major DRAM manufacturers. With DRAM demand rising on the back of generative AI applications that drive needs for HBM and DDR in AI servers, the research house notes DRAM makers are accelerating capacity expansion. Bernstein points out that Kokusai's order book is directly exposed to this capacity wave.
Renesas: Bernstein views Renesas as strategically placed in AI data-center power semiconductors, describing the company as a key DC-DC power supplier for Nvidia GPUs. The research note says Renesas has been gaining content share at Amazon Web Services since late 2025. AI-related revenue at the company doubled in 2025 to represent 4% of total revenue, and management is guiding for another doubling in 2026. Bernstein sees Renesas continuing to benefit from AI server power demand beyond 2026, with the potential to become one of a small number of suppliers offering a complete set of AI power solutions.
This analysis concentrates on businesses with direct links to major technology shifts - EUV adoption, the growing complexity and scale of AI chip testing, DRAM capacity buildouts, and power management for AI data centers. Bernstein's note emphasizes measurable metrics - market share, revenue composition and management capacity targets - to support its rankings of these suppliers.
Implications for markets: The firms highlighted span supplier categories that feed both advanced logic foundries and AI infrastructure - materials and masks, test and measurement, process equipment for memory makers, and power components for data centers. Bernstein's assessments reflect how demand signals from AI chip design and server deployments are translating into concrete order flows and capacity decisions across the Japanese supplier base.