Chinese fabs import record volumes of US chipmaking equipment via Singapore and Malaysia — homegrown tool makers booked record 2025 revenues as price competition squeezes margins

2025 was a bumper year for Chinese chipmaking equipment firms Naura, AMEC, ACM Research, and Piotech, with each posting record revenues according to a recent Nikkei Asia analysis that also found Chinese fabs are importing record volumes of U.S.-branded tools routed through Singapore and Malaysia, drastically reducing direct imports from the U.S..

The record revenues cap a five-year buildout driven by Beijing’s desire to reduce dependence on imported wafer fab equipment, though a Needham & Co. analyst cited in the same report said pricing pressure among Chinese vendors is now beginning to bite into their profit margins.

This growth naturally aligns with the multi-year capacity expansions we’ve been seeing among the top Chinese logic and memory producers, including YMTC, CXMT, and SMIC.

Naura, which offers the broadest product line of the four, reported 27.14 billion yuan in revenue over just the first three quarters of 2025, versus 6.05 billion yuan ($887 million) for all of 2020, per Nikkei's figures. AMEC's revenue grew to more than five times its 2020 base across the same span, while Piotech, which makes thin-film deposition equipment, posted 2025 revenue roughly 13 times its 2020 total.

"While leading domestic equipment companies are still posting strong revenue growth, there are indications that their margin performance is deteriorating," Charles Shi, a semiconductor analyst with Needham & Co., told Nikkei Asia. Shi attributed the squeeze to intensifying competition inside China, with local vendors undercutting each other to win share in fabs formerly supplied by U.S., Japanese, and Dutch equipment makers.

Chinese customs recorded just $2 billion of direct U.S.-origin shipments in 2025, down over 34% year over year and the lowest annual figure since 2017, per Nikkei's analysis. Imports traced to Singapore totaled $5.7 billion, a rise of more than 17% year over year, and shipments traced to Malaysia more than doubled to $3.4 billion.

These figures understate the actual U.S. vendor exposure, with Applied Materials, Lam, and KLA together booking close to $19 billion in China sales across their fiscal year 2025 reporting windows, with each company’s China share sitting above 30% of total revenue. ASML’s 2025 China revenue share landed at 29.1%, a step down from 36% in 2024. China's cumulative imports from Japan across 2020 through 2025 exceeded $42 billion, with Netherlands-origin shipments adding roughly $35 billion.

Meanwhile, the MATCH Act, introduced by Washington lawmakers earlier this month, is the latest in a series of legislative efforts aimed at closing off that Southeast Asian routing to China. Its provisions target chokepoint components alongside finished tools, and name CXMT, YMTC, SMIC, and Hua Hong specifically, but allied governments in Europe and Tokyo haven’t publicly committed to matching its scope.

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