Amsterdam, March 6, 2026, 12:24 CET
Shares of BE Semiconductor Industries dropped 8.4% to 172.75 euros in late Amsterdam trading on Friday. Investors reacted to renewed worries that more relaxed standards for upcoming high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, could hamper demand for the Dutch company’s hybrid bonding equipment.
This has real consequences for Besi’s AI story: hybrid bonding sits at the heart of it. According to TrendForce, via ZDNet Korea, the sector is looking at bumping up the thickness cap for HBM4E and HBM5 to somewhere between 825 and 900 micrometers. If that happens, thermocompression bonding—TCB, the heat-and-pressure approach—could stick around longer than expected.
Hybrid bonding does away with the microbumps of traditional stacking, trimming the distance between memory layers. The downside? It’s more expensive and comes with yield challenges, according to Semiconductor Engineering back in January. Reuters has called hybrid bonding crucial for packing advanced AI chips more densely, especially as shrinking chip features yields fewer improvements.
Degroof Petercam analyst Michael Roeg called the report significant, pointing out that JEDEC has previously loosened stack-height restrictions, which gave memory manufacturers more breathing room on TCB. Shares of Besi slid roughly 9.5% earlier in the day, with trading volumes running high, according to ABM FN.
The drop stands in contrast to Besi’s recent messaging. On Feb. 19, Chief Executive Richard Blickman talked up “increased optimism” heading into 2026, highlighting how order momentum from the second half carried over into the first quarter. Besi projected Q1 revenue would climb 5% to 15% above the fourth quarter’s 166.4 million euros, after orders for the quarter surged 43.3% to 250.4 million euros. Besi
Besi’s March investor presentation kept its upbeat tone on the memory outlook. The company said every major player is looking at both hybrid bonding and TCB for HBM4, but it’s expecting the first 16-high HBM4E stacks using hybrid bonding to hit in 2026. HBM5, according to the deck, will use hybrid bonding exclusively. Hybrid bonding orders? Up—Besi’s tally now stands at over 150 cumulative orders from 18 different customers.
The clock’s ticking for more than just Besi. Applied Materials, the U.S. equipment giant, snapped up a 9% stake last year and now stands as Besi’s top shareholder. Over in Korea, Hanwha Semitech just announced it’s finished its second-generation hybrid bonder for AI chips; those systems go out for customer trials in the first half.
The standards fight might not end the curve, just nudge it. According to TrendForce, Samsung—among the leaders pushing hybrid bonding—is likely to roll out the tech only in part, and only in the first 16-layer HBM4E. Back in January, Reuters mentioned Samsung was set to start HBM4 production for Nvidia next month. Should JEDEC opt for a higher threshold with 20-high stacks, Besi’s hybrid-bonding revenue might just be pushed down the road, not lost.
Besi reported on Wednesday it picked up 6,387 shares from Feb. 26 through March 4, part of its 60 million euro buyback first detailed in October.
