There are few industries more important to the world than semiconductors.

$600 billion worth of chips are sold across the globe each year that go into everything -- from permanent-pressing washing machines to application-crunching datacenters to self-aware automobiles. The world's thirst for computing is continually increasing and the chip industry is shifting into a higher gear to keep up.

Yet it's not just market demand that heavy influences this industry's key players. Significant geopolitical implications are present as well, with developed economies needed cutting-edge chips as a crucial part of their national security. Many countries are scrambling to find ways to guarantee domestic chip supply, to avoid a potentially debilitating supply disruption.

What does all of this mean for investors? Are there companies who have efficiently leveraged their fixed costs to achieve massive economies of scale? Are there newcomers or less-well-known companies who are necessary to the process and are opportunities to investors? And is the gravitational pull of national interests serving as an advantage to certain companies and as a huge headwind to others?

To answer those questions, 7investing hosted a special "Semiconductor Roundtable" this month. 7investing lead advisors Simon Erickson and Krzysztof Piekarski were joined by external guests Jose Najarro and Nick Rossolillo.

In the roundtable discussion, each panelist presented a key part or factor of the semiconductor industry. They also introduced a few of the important companies within it.

First, Jose discussed the chip designers. He described how consumer-facing applications like self-driving automobiles or OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot are powered by cloud datacenters, which use super-efficient chips designed by companies like NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) and AMD (Nasdaq: AMD). The computing horsepower necessary to run artificial intelligence algorithms is increasing quickly, meaning there's a skyrocketing demand for the world's most advanced chip designers.
Nick then discussed the importance of validation software in the design process, to ensure new chips will pass specification and tests to perform as expected. One leader in providing electronic design automation software is Synopsys(Nasdaq: SNPS), whose subscription licensing business model has created a high-margin recurring revenue stream for investors.
Krzysztof discussed the semiconductor manufacturing segment, citing Chris Miller's Chip War book as a key influence to his thinking. He described the importance of cutting-edge chips to national security interests and how two companies -- ASML (Nasdaq: ASML) and Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE: TSM) -- are necessary for the developed world to continue to function. Fabrication facilities cost tens of billions of dollars to build, giving the companies in this capital-intensive segment high barriers-to-entry against potential competitors.
Finally, Simon used geopolitical tensions as a frame for the investing thesis in Intel (Nasdaq: INTC). Intel has been one of the most important semiconductors of the past half-century, who pioneered the concept of "Moore's Law" that led to an exponential rise in the world's computing power. Intel has a boatload of problems, yet faces a unique opportunity of providing America with domestic chip supply. Selling cheaply at just 9x earnings, Intel could be an intriguing opportunity.

At the conclusion, each of the panelists voted on which of the six stocks mentioned they believed was the best opportunity for investors today.

We hope you enjoyed our 7investing Semiconductor Roundtable! To get daily insights like this delivered directly to your Inbox, please join our 7investing email list at 7investing.com/email.