# Packaging & bonding equipment

Part ID: 1.12 · Layer 1 (Compute silicon & packaging)

The bonding, dicing, inspection, and molding equipment used to physically assemble and verify advanced chip packages.

This is the equipment layer behind advanced packaging (2.5D/3D advanced packaging): the hybrid-bonding, thermo-compression bonding, dicing and grinding, molding, and inspection and metrology tools that OSATs and foundries use to physically build and check a finished package. It doesn't touch the die design at all — it's capital equipment sold to whoever is doing the packaging work, whether that's the foundry itself or a third-party OSAT — and its order book is a forward indicator for future packaging capacity additions rather than current shipment volume.
Investors get a more fragmented but arguably clearer read from this sub-layer than from packaging capacity itself: equipment order backlogs are disclosed on a normal capital-equipment reporting cycle, and a given tool vendor's exposure to HBM-specific bonding equipment (as opposed to general-purpose semiconductor equipment) is usually identifiable. Qualification cycles for a new tool at a customer's line are long, which tends to lock in incumbent equipment suppliers once a packaging process is established, but a shift to a new bonding technique (such as hybrid bonding gaining share over thermo-compression) can reshuffle which equipment vendors benefit.

**AI delta:** Growth in advanced packaging volume for AI accelerators flows directly through to demand for the bonding, dicing, and inspection tools used to build that packaging.

## Companies

| Company | Role | Confidence | Ownership | Ticker | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Materials | manufacturer | inferred | public | AMAT |  |
| ASMPT | manufacturer | inferred | public | 0522.HK | thermo-compression bonders |
| BESI | manufacturer | inferred | public | BESI.AS | hybrid bonding |
| Camtek | manufacturer | inferred | public | CAMT |  |
| Disco | manufacturer | inferred | public | 6146.T | dicing/grinding |
| Hanmi Semiconductor | manufacturer | inferred | public | 042700.KS | HBM TC bonders |
| Hanwha Semitech | manufacturer | inferred | subsidiary |  |  |
| KLA | manufacturer | inferred | public | KLAC |  |
| Lam Research | manufacturer | inferred | public | LRCX |  |
| Nova | manufacturer | inferred | public | NVMI | inspection and metrology |
| Onto Innovation | manufacturer | inferred | public | ONTO |  |
| Shibaura | manufacturer | inferred | public | 6590.T |  |
| SUSS MicroTec | manufacturer | inferred | public | SMHN.DE |  |
| Tokyo Electron | manufacturer | inferred | public | 8035.T |  |
| Towa | manufacturer | inferred | public | 6315.T | molding |
| EV Group | manufacturer | inferred | private |  | wafer bonding |

Confidence tags: disclosed = company/filing statement; reported = trade press or partner list; inferred = taxonomy lead.