Applied Materials reported record fiscal 2026 third-quarter revenue of $9.115 billion and forecast an even stronger final quarter, adding fresh evidence that chipmakers are expanding spending on the equipment needed for advanced logic, memory and packaging production.
Revenue rose 25% from a year earlier, while adjusted earnings per share climbed 41% to $3.50, according to the company. GAAP diluted earnings per share were $3.17. Applied Materials also described the quarter as its largest sequential revenue increase on record.
The outlook was the more consequential part of the release. Applied Materials projected fiscal fourth-quarter revenue between $9.75 billion and $10.75 billion, implying a midpoint of $10.25 billion. At that level, quarterly sales would rise roughly 12% from the reported third-quarter total. The company expects adjusted earnings per share of $3.82 to $4.22, with a midpoint of $4.02.
For cryptocurrency markets, the figures do not create a direct signal for tokens or mining operators. They do offer a view into the supply chain behind the computing hardware used across artificial intelligence, data centers and some proof-of-work networks. Applied Materials sells the manufacturing systems used by semiconductor producers, placing it upstream from chip designers, server makers and manufacturers of specialized mining equipment.
Semiconductor equipment demand remains concentrated in advanced chips
Applied Materials’ Semiconductor Systems segment generated $7.04 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 26.5% year over year. The unit accounted for more than three-quarters of companywide sales and remains the central driver of the company’s growth.
Foundry and logic customers represented 67% of Semiconductor Systems revenue, according to Applied Materials. DRAM customers contributed 26%, while flash memory accounted for the remaining 7%.
That mix points to demand led primarily by the chips used for high-performance processors and increasingly complex computing systems, rather than a broad recovery across every category of consumer electronics. Foundry and logic spending supports the production of processors designed by major chip companies, while DRAM demand is closely tied to memory-intensive data-center workloads.
Applied Global Services, which provides support, spare parts and related services for installed semiconductor equipment, reported $1.781 billion in revenue, a 21.7% increase from a year earlier. Other businesses contributed $294 million, up 6.9%.
The service business provides a useful measure of how much equipment is operating inside chip factories. Its growth alongside sales of new systems suggests manufacturers are both adding capacity and maintaining a larger installed base of advanced production tools.
Margins rose as sales reached a record
Applied Materials reported a GAAP gross margin of 50.3% and a non-GAAP gross margin of 50.4%. The company said this marked its 13th consecutive quarter of year-over-year gross-margin expansion.
Margin growth can be especially relevant for equipment suppliers because their products are often highly specialized and deeply integrated into a customer’s production process. A chipmaker cannot easily replace a deposition, etching or inspection tool once it becomes part of a qualified manufacturing line. That gives established suppliers more protection than companies selling standardized computing hardware into a more competitive market.
Gary Dickerson, chief executive officer of Applied Materials, leads a company whose systems are used in numerous stages of chip fabrication. Deposition tools place extremely thin layers of material onto silicon wafers, while etch equipment selectively removes material to create circuit structures. These steps become more difficult as chip features shrink and manufacturers stack more components into tightly integrated packages.
Applied Materials introduced six new process systems during the quarter aimed at DRAM and advanced packaging, along with new deposition and etch tools. Advanced packaging connects multiple chips more closely within a single package, allowing manufacturers to combine computing, memory and specialized accelerators without relying solely on smaller transistor dimensions.
That approach has become increasingly important for high-performance computing. It can improve the speed and efficiency with which processors exchange data with memory and other chips, though the benefit depends on system design, software and the final hardware product.
Singapore expansion targets cleanroom capacity
The company also committed $500 million to expand capacity at its Tampines site in Singapore. Applied Materials said the project would more than double advanced cleanroom capacity at the location.
Cleanrooms are controlled manufacturing environments designed to limit airborne particles and other contaminants that can damage semiconductor equipment or compromise precision components. Expanding this capacity gives Applied Materials more room to build and support the complex systems demanded by customers pursuing newer manufacturing processes.
Applied Materials added Broadcom, the University of California, Berkeley, and SCREEN Semiconductor Solutions as partners at its EPIC Center. The facility is designed to bring chip manufacturers, research institutions and equipment suppliers together to develop and test technologies for future semiconductor production.
Broadcom’s involvement links the center to a major designer of networking, connectivity and custom computing chips. SCREEN Semiconductor Solutions supplies wafer-cleaning equipment, making its participation relevant to the process-control challenges involved in advanced manufacturing.
Crypto hardware effects remain indirect
The report offers a more grounded reading of the semiconductor cycle than claims that rising fabrication-equipment sales automatically justify purchases of compute-linked tokens. Semiconductor capital spending often reflects multi-year capacity plans, and the chips produced by these investments serve a wide range of markets, including cloud computing, mobile devices, automotive systems, industrial equipment and networking infrastructure.
Proof-of-work mining does depend on specialized processors, but mining profitability is determined by several factors beyond the availability of newer chips. Bitcoin’s price, network difficulty, electricity costs, machine efficiency, financing conditions and the pace of hardware deployment all shape operating economics.
A growing supply of advanced manufacturing capability could eventually support more efficient application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs, used by large mining operators. It could also benefit data-center infrastructure more broadly. Yet a larger supply of efficient hardware can accelerate network difficulty as operators deploy new machines, reducing the advantage for miners that fail to control power costs or secure favorable equipment contracts.
Applied Materials raised its fiscal 2026 revenue outlook for Semiconductor Systems and said it expects another strong growth year in 2027. Its forecast places the company among the clearest beneficiaries of sustained spending on advanced computing infrastructure, while leaving the downstream effects on cryptocurrency mining dependent on far more than the semiconductor cycle alone.
Chip demand signals broader risk appetite—see how this could shape crypto in 2026 in our crypto outlook.
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