China's Naura rising to the chip-making equipment challenge
Naura Technology, China's top semiconductor production equipment maker, has risen to 6th place in the global ranking, according to Shanghai-based technology consulting firm CINNO Research.
Only industry giants ASML, Applied Materials, Lam Research, Tokyo Electron and KLA now lead Naura in terms of total sales.
The CINNO Ranking for 2024 looks like this:
ASML (Netherlands) Applied Materials (USA) Lam Research (USA) Tokyo Electron (Japan) KLA (USA) NAURA (China) Screen (Japan) Advantest (Japan) ASM International (Netherlands) Disco (Japan)
Naura has risen to prominence with the rapid growth of the Chinese semiconductor industry, which accounted for more than 40% of global demand for production equipment last year.
Sources: SEMI; 2024 company data and estimates for countries ex-China. Chart: Asia Times
In January, Naura reported preliminary high and low sales estimates for 2024 that averaged 29.7 billion yuan, or US$4.1 billion at the current exchange rate, up 36% from 2023.
Complete and finalized financial results are scheduled for release in April. Naura's sales have tripled in the past three years and are now 7.5 times higher than they were in 2019.
Source: Company data; Chart: Asia Times
CINNO ranked Naura 8th in 2023, but a more comprehensive analysis conducted by TechInsights, comparing not company-wide sales but sales of semiconductor production equipment alone, put it in 10th place.
In that year, semiconductor production equipment accounted for about 60% of Naura's total sales.
According to the numbers available so far, there was probably a similar gap in 2024, indicating that Naura ranked 8th, not 6th. Nevertheless, it is now one of the most prominent companies in the industry and outgrowing its competitors.
There is a very large gap between the first and second tiers of the industry, but it appears that Naura has the potential to catch up with KLA by the end of the decade.
Source: TechInsights; Chart: Asia Times
Naura rose to prominence during a period of fair treatment by the US government. In January 2018, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the Chinese company's acquisition of Akrion Systems, a producer of silicon wafer surface preparation equipment based in Pennsylvania.
In October 2022, the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added Naura Technology subsidiary Beijing Naura Magnetoelectric Technology to its Unverified List, but removed it in December after discussions with management.
Companies are put on the Unverified List when the BIS cannot 'verify their bona fides because an end-use check could not be completed satisfactorily' – in this case, for violations of restrictions on exports to the People's Republic of China.
However, the BIS finally added Naura to its Entity List in December 2025 – one of 140 entities 'determined by the US Government to be acting contrary to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States' in a final mass sanctioning of technology exports to China and related destinations in Singapore, South Korea and Japan by the Biden administration.
'The Entity List,' as stated by the BIS, 'identifies entities for which there is reasonable cause to believe, based on specific and articulable facts, that the entities have been involved, are involved, or pose a significant risk of being or becoming involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.'
But Naura is not terribly worried, stating that 'Currently, 90% of the company's revenue comes from the domestic market and less than 10% in overseas markets, so this impact is expected to be small.'
Naura's product line currently includes deposition, etching, cleaning, heat treatment, UV curing and crystal growth equipment for the semiconductor, flat panel display and photovoltaic industries, lithium-ion battery manufacturing equipment, capacitors, resistors, crystal devices and power supply and microwave modules.
In addition, it reportedly plans to add photoresist coating and developing to its semiconductor equipment portfolio by acquiring a substantial stake in and eventually taking control of Kingsemi, the only Chinese maker of this equipment.
Tokyo Electron has about 90% of the market for coater/developer equipment, with Japan's Screen Holdings accounting for most of the remainder.
Naura competes with Tokyo Electron in deposition, etch and cleaning equipment, and with Screen in cleaning equipment. In deposition and etch, it is also up against Lam Research and Applied Materials, but those two companies have been hamstrung in China by a US government order preventing American companies from servicing the equipment they have sold there.
There are numerous other Chinese makers of semiconductor production equipment attempting to break into the industry supply chain. The second largest one, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC), specializes in deposition and etch.
With sales of about $1.2 billion in 2024, AMEC is likely to place between 15th and 20th in the global ranking. But with sales having risen by an estimated 45% last year, it is moving up fast.
SMIC, Hua Hong and other Chinese foundries, YMTC and other Chinese makers of memory ICs – the entire Chinese semiconductor industry is buying whatever equipment they can from Naura, AMEC and other domestic suppliers.
For about a year now, Western and Japanese companies and market research organizations have been forecasting a slowdown in Chinese equipment demand, but they have so far been wrong and are probably still.
As long as there is market share to take from imports subject to US-led sanctions, the sales of Chinese semiconductor equipment makers should continue to grow.
Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667
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