China’s printed circuit board (PCB) makers are embarking on a factory-building spree to feed demand fuelled by the global artificial intelligence boom, a rush that is expected to push their capital expenditure to a record high. In the first half of the year, more than 20 Chinese PCB companies – including Victory Giant Technology, WUS Printed Circuit, Shennan Circuits and Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing – disclosed aggressive capacity expansion plans. With major players committing hundreds of millions of dollars per project, the cycle marks one of the most intense growth phases the sector has seen in recent years. Driving the surge is a pivot towards the high-end boards required for AI servers. Victory Giant, based in Huizhou in southern China’s Guangdong province, recorded a massive jump in its first-quarter spending, scaling up its capital expenditure to 3.6 billion yuan (US$530 million) from 730.1 million yuan a year earlier. Rival WUS Printed Circuit, based in Kunshan in southeastern Jiangsu province, saw its first-quarter capital expenditure more than double to 1.5 billion yuan, up from 658.1 million yuan a year earlier. “Computing power demand is becoming the most important structural growth driver for the PCB industry, pushing products to become high-layer, high-density, high-speed, and low-loss platforms,” said analysts from China Securities in a note released on Wednesday. The brokerage said that AI infrastructure construction was fuelling demand across computing, switching and liquid-cooling boards, driving an industry shift from “quantity to quality”. Shenzhen-based Shennan Circuits announced plans in June to raise up to 4.88 billion yuan via a private share placement, with the lion’s share set to be channelled into a 4.54 billion yuan AI computing circuit project in the eastern city of Wuxi. WUS Printed Circuit in February disclosed a 3.3 billion yuan project aimed at meeting medium to long-term demand for high-density, high-frequency PCBs. The facility is expected to generate 3.05 billion yuan in annual revenue once production begins. Gao Chengfei, director of Guangzhou-based consulting firm Tiaoyuan, said that high capital expenditures would continue in the second half of 2026 and into 2027. “The current gap between domestic high-end PCB capacity and demand is quite obvious, and the key point lies in product structure rather than total volume,” Gao said. While the value of PCBs in a single AI server could be 10 times that in a traditional server, production capacity for such boards was constrained by equipment precision and material bottlenecks, he said. Some analysts urged caution amid the rapid expansion. In a recent setback, research firm SemiAnalysis said on Monday that Nvidia’s Kyber NVL144 server rack could be delayed to 2028 due to manufacturing challenges. Though Nvidia later denied it, the report still cast a shadow over the production plans of PCB makers supplying the US giant, including Victory Giant and WUS Printed Circuit. Steep technical barriers that stretched the yield-curve timeline, a reliance on overseas suppliers for upstream materials and intense geopolitical pressures were core challenges threatening the rapid buildout, Gao said. Additional reporting by Richard Chen