Applied Materials reported record revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter on Thursday. The Santa Clara, California-based company also forecast first-quarter sales above Wall Street estimates, as chipmakers raised spending on equipment for artificial-intelligence memory and advanced processors. Its shares rose in after-hours trading in New York.

One of the world's largest makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment said quarterly revenue topped $8bn, its highest ever. Adjusted earnings per share also beat the consensus compiled by LSEG. Chief executive Gary Dickerson said demand for leading-edge logic, high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging had driven the company's strongest year on record.

Memory makers including SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology have expanded capital budgets throughout 2026. They are racing to supply high-bandwidth memory for AI accelerators made by Nvidia and AMD, and DRAM prices have climbed sharply during the shortage. Applied Materials said its DRAM equipment sales grew strongly from a year earlier, while the share of revenue from China continued to decline under US export controls.

The guidance pointed to further growth into calendar 2027. Brice Hill, the company's chief financial officer, said customers had given visibility into multi-year capacity plans for gate-all-around transistors and backside power delivery. Analysts said the results eased concerns that equipment orders would plateau after this year's surge in memory investment.

The figures followed strong recent results from rivals Lam Research and KLA, as well as from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which raised its outlook in October. Investors have treated chip-equipment makers as a second-order bet on AI infrastructure spending by Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta. Those companies have each signalled higher capital expenditure for 2027.