Is this the most significant demand shock the semiconductor industry has ever seen?<br><br>Gerrit Steen, CFO of AT&amp;S, joins host Richard Moffat on the Côte d’Azur for an In the Know special. Gerrit reflects on the unprecedented AI-driven demand reshaping the semiconductor supply chain and what it means for long-term growth, capacity planning, and advanced packaging technologies like CoWoS. He also shares how AT&amp;S is positioning for this structural shift, and whether geopolitical supply chain realignment presents new opportunities for globally diversified players.<br>Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Live from the Nice Conference: Gerrit Steen, CFO of AT&S

In the Know 

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** In the Know

## Transcript

In the Know with Bernstein Research Welcome to In the Know with Bernstein Research. I'm Richard Moffat, based in our London office, in the second of a three-part series, Live from Nice. This episode is coming to you from the Côte d'Azur, where, over the course of two days, we're joined by corporate leaders, investors and Bernstein analysts, offering our clients the opportunity to meet with Europe's most exciting CEOs and CFOs of small and mid-cap companies.

Joining me today, Gerrit Steen from AT&S, whose IC substrates and PCBs are key building blocks of today's huge AI data center build-out. Welcome, Gerrit. Good afternoon, Richard. Thanks for having me. Great pleasure. Could you just give us a very quick overview of your main product set? Because it's a very exciting time for the semiconductor supply chain. So really, before we get into where that's going, if you could just tell us where you're positioned in that space.

Sure. AT&S is really an enabler of the global digital infrastructure. So what we are manufacturing in our two business units are IC interconnect substrates and PCBs. And they are basically empowering today's AI ship systems and are used as well in a multitude of industrial, automotive, communications systems all over the world. And obviously, what a time for the global semiconductor supply chain.

Have you seen anything like this before? Is there any other sort of comparable demand shock that you'd see as a good analog to what's going on at the moment? Or were you just in uncharted territory? No, Richard. I think first of all, this is not a typical Semicon cycle. You know, what we are seeing here is the build-out of a whole new global infrastructure layer, which will empower a lot of different applications. Not only AI models, but robotics, autonomous driving, digital factories, everything.

And therefore, it's unprecedented what we are seeing, but it's not a short-term hype either. And obviously, at the moment, we're seeing a surge in GPU demands for the, you know, Gen AI 1.0 has been driven by that. And our analysts and a lot of commentators expect the Gentic AI to be the next driver, and particularly for CPUs. I mean, what do you think? Obviously, you have customers that do both, but what are you hearing?

No, it's a great question, Richard, because what we are seeing is that the models are really moving from training, where you need GPUs, to inference, where you're actually using the models. And that means the whole ecosystem, including memory, including CPU, so whole system is basically moving up. You know, we have seen, and that's what we're hearing from our customers. You know, when you looked at in the past in a typical AI data center, it was probably GPU to CPU 5 to 1.

It's moving to 2 to 1 or even 1 to 1, because you need much more CPU power as well to orchestrate the whole thing and run, when it comes to Agendic AI, the whole models. And, Alvin, does that m...

Live from the Nice Conference: Gerrit Steen, CFO of AT&S

Transcript

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Live from the Nice Conference: Gerrit Steen, CFO of AT&S

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.