IT之家 October 13 news: Applied Materials plans to double its revenue in the coming years, but will not expand its workforce at the same pace, because the company is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence tools for product development, quality control, and other work.
"As the company doubles in size over the next few years, we will not double the number of employees at the same time," said Gary Dickerson, CEO of the semiconductor equipment maker, in an interview.
Before making these remarks, the company held an event to officially unveil the EPIC Center in Silicon Valley, an investment of 5 billion US dollars (IT之家 note: approximately 33.502 billion yuan at the current exchange rate), a center focused on equipment and process innovation and commercialization of results. This 5 billion US dollar (approximately 33.502 billion yuan at the current exchange rate) facility aims to help chipmakers join forces with researchers and equipment partners to accelerate R&D.
As the largest semiconductor equipment producer in the United States, Applied Materials is benefiting from a surge in equipment demand driven by the artificial intelligence boom. The company itself is also using AI tools for innovation and product development, while seeking ways to improve semiconductor yields, which refers to the proportion of usable chips produced from silicon wafers.
"For our customers, producing more good chips means huge gains," he said. The company is deploying AI applications at customer sites to improve "the number of good chips per wafer as well as daily wafer processing volume."
Dickerson declined to give headcount forecasts for the coming years. As of the second half of the 7th month (July), the company had approximately 38,900 employees.
The executive mentioned thatin some business units, artificial intelligence has delivered enormous productivity gains, with efficiency improvements of up to 50% in some scenarios, and the company will hire in these areas.
The EPIC Center, located in Sunnyvale, California, was jointly built by Applied Materials together with customers including TSMC, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Micron Technology, and SK Hynix. The center covers 600,000 square feet (equivalent to 56,000 square meters) and has nearly 4 acres of advanced cleanroom space for chip-related R&D. According to the company, the concrete used in the project would be enough to fill 34 Olympic-standard swimming pools, and the steel used could build two Eiffel Towers.
Dickerson said there are some short-term risks in the expansion of the AI industry that could create headwinds, such as shortages of capital, materials, energy, and capacity, but in the long run, this round of growth will be "transformational."
"In the short term, there are indeed some factors that will slow the pace of growth," he said, "but under any scenario, the scale of growth will be substantial."