Silicon IP Continues Steady Growth Path

EDA and silicon IP revenue increased 8.6% to $5.089 billion in Q2 2025, up from $4.6855 billion in Q2 2024, according to the ESD Alliance. Total EDA revenue growth was assisted by impressive results in the CAE category, the largest tool sector, which showed 17.2% growth over Q2 2024.

“It was another good quarter overall,” said Walden C. Rhines, executive sponsor of the SEMI Electronic Design Market Data report. “We had 8.6% overall growth, which is good — not a record, but still very good. Unusual aspects of the results included the fact that China, after five quarters of decline, is now back positive, but barely so, for EDA only. But it’s still negative on IP. Also, India is really growing quite a bit.  Just in the past year, it’s gone from the mid-$70 million range to the over-$100 million range, so pretty strong. Taiwan is also strong. Asia Pacific used to be the driver for everything because of China. Now there is very strong growth in Taiwan and India, but relatively weak growth in China.”

When it comes to worldwide intellectual property, 9 of the past 10 quarters have posted positive growth, so it’s continued pretty strongly, Rhines noted. “Q3  might be interesting because there are some publicized events on IP sales. But as far as the second quarter of 2025 goes, it’s still doing okay. Then, for total EDA without IP, this is the 21st quarter of positive growth, so the industry overall has pretty good statistics.”

Among the other categories tracked by SEMI, comparing Q2 2025 revenue to Q2 2024:

• Revenue for computer-aided engineering increased 17.2% to $1.929 billion;
• IC physical design and verification revenue dropped, as it did in Q1 2025, 9.9% to $701.9 million;
• PCB and MCM revenue rose 7.8% to $430.5 million;
• Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) revenue increased 8.7% to $1.827 billion, and
• Services revenue grew 11.9% to $201.2 million.

Fig. 1: Q2 revenue by sector. Source: SEMI Electronic Design Market Data Report

On a four-quarter moving basis, total growth was up 10.4%, but EDA and IP revenue in Asia/Pacific, which is largely China, was just 7/2% growth, compared to 14.1% growth in the Americas. EMEA grew 10.7% during that period. See fig. 2 below.

Fig. 2: Four-quarter moving average, showing continued growth in most tool categories. Source: SEMI EDMD Report

Finally, headcount continues to rise as well. The companies tracked in the report employed 72,529 people globally in Q2 2025, a 14.8% increase over the Q2 2024 headcount of 63,188 and up 12.6% compared to the previous quarter in 2025.