“Trailing edge equipment is in shortage too now. In fact, in China, there's a very healthy second-hand semicap tool market. And that has gotten so tight that people are stealing equipment… Somebody pulls up a truck, presumably with 10 guys and a forklift, and steals equipment. That's how much demand there is.”
The Circuit · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Jay Goldberg on how far the chip-equipment boom reaches, even to used tools for older process nodes. Co-host Ben Bajarin replied that organized crime "has moved from robbing banks… to robbing semiconductor equipment."
Transcript
…And how that all works out is still to be determined. Right. And certainly that wasn't like, you know, for all of the new fabs coming online in China, nobody really talked that much about trailing edge at Semicon. I think people wanted to talk about new things. I will say there was one. Go ahead.
I was going to say, that's what drives new leading edge or new nodes is what drives new equipment. So it's like, that's kind of why I think Semicon West talks about it. It's good for equipment makers.
But I've been reading up about this. Like trailing edge equipment is in shortage too now. In fact, in China, there's a very healthy second-hand semicap tool market. And that has gotten so tight that people are stealing equipment. Right? You know, you're a broker, you sell used etched tools, you have a warehouse somewhere. Somebody pulls up a truck, presumably with 10 guys and a forklift and steals equipment. Like, that's how bad, how much demand there is. Organized crime
has moved from robbing banks and other things to robbing semiconductor equipment. Yeah. That is the day we live in.
Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting stuff. I mean, for sure. But like I said, I think there's a lot to noodle on around the shape of the semiconductor industry post 2829 on the back of all of this additional capacity and new tooling, innovation and process and reticle limits and packaging and all those things. It's…
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