The fabless integrated circuit (IC) business is booming because of the latest technological developments in the semiconductor industry. These breakthroughs allow some of the top fabless companies in the world to offer high-performance chips that are revolutionary without having to pay for the overhead of running a semiconductor foundry. A fabless semiconductor company designs, markets, and sells semiconductor microchips but does not involve in semiconductor manufacturing. 

By avoiding the capital-intensive duty of running fabrication facilities, fabless companies like NVIDIA and AMD can focus on design and innovation by outsourcing semiconductor manufacturing to foundries. These businesses contract out production to a foundry company like Intel Corporation, Samsung Electronics, Apple, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

This approach shortens time-to-market, increases flexibility, and saves money. The semiconductor market is everchanging because of the advances in large language models and AI(artificial intelligence). Additionally, the ability to quickly adjust to changes in the semiconductor market allows fabless IC manufacturers to remain competitive and even grow their market share, all without having to spend a fortune on manufacturing infrastructure. Let us take a look at some of the top fabless semiconductor companies in the world.

Top Fabless Semiconductor Companies Global List (2025) (based on annual revenue)

The list of top fabless companies in the world based on annual revenue has been given below in the form of a table for your reference:

Nvidia Corporation

Founded in Delaware, Nvidia Corporation is a global technology leader based in the United States. Graphics processing units (GPUs), application programming interfaces (APIs), and system-on-a-chip units (SoCs) are all part of what this software and fabless company manufactures. The company is currently dominating the fabless semiconductor industry because of the technological advancement made in Artifical intelligence. 

The LLMs (large language models) that power the popular AI chatbots require high processing power. NVIDIA's flagship GPUs are widely used for LLM training and model development. Workstations powered by its professional GPUs find use in industries including building and engineering, media and entertainment, transportation, research and development, and manufacturing design, among others.

Nvidia last year announced its plans to invest USD 200 billion for the purchase of data center equipment. Additionally, they are expanding their Omniverse Blueprint for AI Factory Digital Twins, offering engineering teams more tools and integrations for building AI data centers.

Furthermore, they cater to data science, High Performance Computing (HPC), and the automotive industries. It has made a more recent foray into mobile computing with the release of the Tegra mobile CPU, which powers devices including smartphones, tablets, and in-car entertainment systems. Apart from this, the company is planning to develop semiconductor plants in Japan.

On 18th September 2025, Nvidia and Intel Corporation announced a partnership to jointly develop multiple generations of custom data center and PC projects with an investment of USD 5 billion.

In May 2025, Nvidia released DGX Spark and DGX Station systems in collaboration with Taiwanese manufacturers like Acer, GIGABYTE, and MSI. DGX Spark features the NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, while DGX Station includes the NVIDIA GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip.

On 5th December 2024, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) had discussions with Nvidia Corp to produce its Blackwell Artificial Intelligence chips, in its new plant at Arizona. So far, Nvidia's Blackwell chips have been manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan. On successful agreement, TSMC's Arizona plant will schedule volume production of Nvidia Blackwell chips.

Intel FPGA

The American company Altera worked in the field of programmable logic devices (PLDs). After being acquired by Intel on December 28, 2015, the company rebranded as Programmable Solutions Group (PSG).

The Stratix series has the greatest capacity and bandwidth among the firm's FPGAs. The business used a technique for making chips called completely depleted silicon on insulators (FDSOI) to create system-on-a-chip FPGA devices.

After completing an FPGA design, Altera provided a publicly accessible ASIC design procedure based on HardCopy ASICs that transformed it into an unchangeable form. The Quartus II design software served as a shared environment for all of Altera's devices.

On 14th February 2025, Altera Corporation (Acquired by Intel Corporation) is in talks with TSMC and Broadcom Inc, coordinated under President Donald Trump's administration. Broadcom proposed its interest in acquiring Intel's chip design and marketing, whereas TSMC will lead Intel's chip manufacturing.  

Qualcomm Inc.

The United States of America is home to the global firm Qualcomm Inc., which produces wireless technology-related semiconductors, software, and services. Several mobile communications technologies, including 5G, 4G, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, and WCDMA, are based on its patents. Additionally, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. designs the Snapdragon processors.

The custom-designed processor utilizes a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture and is capable of running ARM-based applications and programs.

Qualcomm does not produce hardware, such as phones or infrastructure equipment, but rather creates software and designs for semiconductors, intellectual property, development tools, and services. Furthermore, Qualcomm has developed 5G technologies and frequencies, including mmWave and sub-6. 

On 18th October 2024, Qualcomm Inc. announced it expects to source semiconductor chips from India in the next two years. It has collaborated with Micron to establish a memory chip plant in Sanand, Gujarat, India. Currently, Qualcomm Inc. is pushing its 8-core processor for affordable laptops and 5G phones in India. 

Broadcom Inc.

Broadcom Inc. is a multinational corporation based in the United States that is involved in the design, development, manufacturing, and distribution of a wide variety of software and semiconductor products throughout the world.

Broadcom caters to the data center (mainframe), networks, software, internet, wireless, recording, and industrial markets with its array of semiconductors and infrastructure software applications.

Data center networking, home connections, broadband accessibility, telecommunications devices, mobile devices, base stations, data center servers, and storage facilities, automation of factories, displays, mainframe management and operations, power generation, alternative energy systems, and application software development are common uses for its products.

Furthermore, Broadcom overseas designs and develops Ethernet switches, Fibre Channel SAN switches, HBAs, SSD controllers, storage connectivity, and optical transceiver components of a data center. Apart from this, Broadcom provides enterprise software solutions that focus on product planning, development, and IT operations management.

LSI Logic Corporation was acquired by Avago Technologies in 2014. It was later rebranded as Broadcom Limited.

On 15th December 2024, Broadcom Inc. hit a USD 1 trillion market valuation for the first time. This hit is driven by the predictions about growing demand for AI chips. 

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD)

American multinational semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) designs and manufactures microprocessors and associated technologies for use in personal computers and other electronic devices.

At the beginning, AMD mainly sold computer memory chips and peripherals. The business subsequently entered the microprocessor industry. AMD primarily provides integrated circuits, graphics processing units, embedded processors, motherboard chipsets, and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for use in desktop computers, servers, workstations, and embedded systems.

Recently, the company expanded its Alveo portfolio with the launch of the world's fastest electronic trading accelerator. AMD Alveo UL3422 provides trading firms, market makers, and financial institutions with a slim form factor accelerator optimized for rack space cost and designed for a fast path to deployment in a wide range of servers.

In addition to its announcement of intentions to join the high-performance computing sector, the company has grown into other areas, such as the gaming and data center industries. Recently, AMD has inaugurated its largest global design center in India.

On 11th October 2024, AMD announced its plans to start mass production of a new version of its artificial intelligence chips - MI325X. The production is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2024. AMD also announced its plans to release next-generation MI350 series chips specializing in increased memory compared to its MI300X and MI250X chips in the second half of 2025.

MediaTek Inc.

MediaTek Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company based in Taiwan. They produce chips for various electronic devices, including wireless communications, HDTV, navigation systems, consumer multimedia products, optical disc drives, and digital subscriber line services.

The company's provision of reference designs to its clients is its strongest suit. In the third quarter of 2020, MediaTek captured 31% of the smartphone chipset market. The latest flagship processor from MediaTek, the Dimensity 9300, was just unveiled. The latest chipset not only promises longer battery life and improved performance, but it can also generate artificial intelligence.

On 11th October 2024, MediaTek Inc. launched its new flagship smartphone chip. Manufactured by TSMC, this second generation, 3-nanometer technology with a dimensity 9400. This chip has over 28% more transistors and offers 35% more efficiency. 

Apart from this, In may 2025, MediaTek announced that the tape-out process for its first 2-nanometer chip is scheduled for September 2025. This paves the way for volume production of its next-generation flagship smartphone chip potentially by the end of the year or early next year.

Marvell Technology Inc.

The American corporation Marvell Technology, Inc. designs, develops and manufactures semiconductors and associated technologies. 

Among Marvell's networking offerings include the FastLinQ family of adapters and controllers, as well as Ethernet switches, physical layer (PHY) components, and automotive Ethernet.

The first-generation Apple iPhone relied on a Wi-Fi processor from Marvell. Some of Marvell's security-related products consist of the NITROX Cryptographic Offload Engines and LiquidSecurity HSM Adapters. Additionally, Marvell provided a Customer Specific Standard Product (CSSP) that allowed customers to directly incorporate their accelerators and interfaces into Marvell's Octeon processors.

In May 2025, Marvell and NVIDIA announced that they will provide custom solutions for advanced AI infrastructure. Marvell's custom silicon with Nvidia's new NVLink Fusion offers hyperscalers an efficient option to scale-up solutions that meet the rigorous demands of model training and agentic AI inference.

Realtek Semiconductor Corporation

Realtek Semiconductor Corp. is one of the top fabless semiconductor companies located in Taiwan. In 1998, it became a part of the Taiwan Stock Exchange. 

Globally, Realtek produces and distributes a wide range of microchips, with three main product lines: ICs for communications networks, ICs for computer peripherals, and ICs for multimedia. Computer peripheral integrated circuits (ICs) from Realtek include the standard AC'97 audio codecs, HD Audio codecs, card reader controllers, clock generators, and IEEE 1394 ICs. Products from multimedia ICs include digital media processors, LCD monitor controllers, and LCD TV controllers.

On 2nd December 2024, Marvell Technology, Inc. and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have inked a five-year multi-generational agreement. This includes collaboration across multiple AWS products and a broad range of data center semiconductors from Marvell Technology, Inc.

Novatek Microelectronics Corp

Novatek Microelectronics Corp. is a fabless chip design company founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan. It specializes in the design, development, and sales of a wide range of drivers, including SoC (System on Chip) and ICs (Integrated Circuits). 

It is one of the largest suppliers of display drivers and has several subsidiaries worldwide, including Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, ShenZhen, Cheng Du, Wuhan, Xi'an, SuZhou, Hefei, Hong Kong.

On 7th November 2025, Novatek announced its plans to begin mass production of OLED TDDI (Touch and Display Driver Integration). This technology combines touch and display functions into a single chip, thus reducing the overall cost of OLED displays. Apple is expected to be its first customer for TDDI chips. The mass production is expected to begin by Q2 2025.

Cirrus Logic

Cirrus Logic is a fabless semiconductor company providing both high-precision and low-power processing solutions. These solutions are designed for a variety of mobile and consumer applications, such as AR/VR headsets, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and wearables. The company has an IP (intellectual property) portfolio of around 3,910 pending and issued patents worldwide.

The development of a diverse array of components for industry-leading global brands that differentiate their products, in part through our innovative custom, semi-custom, and general-market ICs, has been facilitated by these patents.

In the 1990s, Cirrus Logic acquired Crystal Semiconductor, a supplier of analog and mixed-signal converter ICs, and became a leading supplier of PC graphics chips, audio converters, and chips for magnetic storage products.

Furthermore, the company has focused on developing highly innovative custom, semi-custom, and general-market ICs for the world’s leading consumer OEMs (original equipment manufacturers).  

Competitive Landscape of the Fabless Semiconductor Companies

The key competitors in the fabless IC market compete with one another for dominance by employing strategic tactics, technological improvements, and product diversification. They offer a variety of semiconductor solutions and worldwide distribution networks. In order to strengthen their position in the market, these industry leaders frequently engage in business collaborations, mergers and acquisitions, and product breakthroughs. 

Conclusion

The fabless semiconductor companies are known for their constant innovation, and the companies identified above are at the forefront of this dynamic field. The impact of Qualcomm on mobile technologies, the supremacy of NVIDIA in GPUs, the disruptive solutions of AMD, the wide portfolio of Broadcom, the affordability focus of MediaTek, and the contributions to data infrastructure by Marvell all combine to form the technological environment.

The collaborative character of the semiconductor ecosystem is exhibited by these companies, which facilitate breakthroughs through collaborations and acquisitions. The importance of fabless companies is growing as the globe invests in new technologies like 5G, AI, and the IoT. Top companies in this field will keep pushing innovation forward and paving the way for revolutionary new technologies in the years to come.

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