MarketsandMarkets values the US test and measurement equipment market at $13,083 million in 2026 and projects it will reach $19,770.3 million by 2031 — a compound annual growth rate of 7.1% that runs 0.7 percentage points above the global average of 6.4%. The absolute increase over the five-year window is $6,687.3 million.

The forecast rests on a triangulated methodology: bottom-up revenue estimates for more than 30 T&M equipment providers, cross-checked against a top-down allocation across regions and segments, then validated through primary interviews on both supply and demand sides. Secondary inputs included SEC filings, annual reports, and disclosures from standards bodies — IEC, IEEE, ISO, ANSI, NIST, ETSI, and 3GPP. All figures are vendor-analyst projections, not measured shipments, so treat the segment splits as modeled estimates rather than audited revenue.

What drives the number

The analyst firm attributes the premium over global growth to three demand-side forces. First, semiconductor manufacturing capacity expansion in the US, supported by CHIPS Act initiatives and supply chain resilience programs, creates demand for state-of-the-art test equipment at advanced nodes. Second, the proliferation of 5G and IoT devices raises measurement complexity in telecommunications and automotive validation. Third, quality assurance requirements across automotive and industrial sectors tighten the testing burden per unit shipped.

The report also flags adoption of automated and AI-enabled measurement solutions for complex device validation, alongside Industry 4.0 practices, as structural demand drivers through the forecast period.

Segment structure

The market breaks into eight dimensions. By product type: automated test equipment, modular instruments, and standalone instruments. By instrument type: electrical and electronic test instruments; mechanical, physical, and industrial instruments; RF and microwave instruments; and other specialized standalone instruments. By testing type, equipment testing is the largest segment, while data centers rank as the fastest-growing end-use industry — a data point that tracks with the AI infrastructure buildout and its power and high-speed signal validation requirements.

Lifecycle stages span design validation, R&D, production, field, and service and maintenance testing. Commercially, the market splits across new equipment sales, rental, and used equipment — a distinction the report maintains explicitly to separate ownership-based from access-based demand.

Where the money goes

The vendor landscape mixes US incumbents with Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese suppliers. Advantest holds the SoC, power device, and memory ATE franchise; Teradyne covers semiconductor test plus robotics and silicon photonics; Keysight spans communications and electronic industrial solutions including calibration and test-as-a-service. Ralliant carries oscilloscopes, Keithley SMUs, and semiconductor test systems; Anritsu and Rohde & Schwarz dominate RF/microwave and 5G measurement; Hioki and Chroma ATE serve power, battery, and energy storage test. Fluke holds handheld electrical test and thermal imaging; FormFactor supplies probe cards for logic, memory, RF, and co-packaged optics applications.

The report's commercial use-case table illustrates where the growth concentrates. Keysight delivered EV battery test solutions covering cell, module, and pack-level validation with lab automation for battery fault analysis. NI (now part of Emerson's portfolio orbit) supported Raytheon with SystemLink for test data management in aerospace and defense manufacturing. Tektronix provided AI data center testing for power supply and high-speed infrastructure subsystems. Rohde & Schwarz enabled 5G private network performance verification for connected robots and automated guided vehicles, and Anritsu offered automotive telematics control unit testing in simulated lab environments.

Adjacent ecosystems — electronic warfare, industrial automation, and testing, inspection, and certification — overlap the T&M market through shared technologies: signal generators, automated test equipment, sensors, and eddy current and acoustic emission testing methods.

The measurement question

A 7.1% CAGR for the US against 6.4% globally implies the American market's share of worldwide T&M spending — roughly $52.64 billion in 2026, growing to $71.79 billion by 2031 — will expand modestly through the forecast period. That expansion depends almost entirely on whether CHIPS Act-funded fab construction converts into sustained domestic equipment procurement rather than imported test capacity.

For instrument buyers, the more actionable question is segment-level: if data centers are the fastest-growing end-use segment, lab managers planning capital expenditure for 2026–2031 should weigh power-quality instruments, high-speed interconnect validation tools, and modular platforms against traditional general-purpose bench instruments — and consider whether rental and used-equipment channels can bridge capacity gaps while new-equipment lead times stretch under fab-driven demand.