This paper uses a nonparametric production frontier approach to investigate the operating efficiency differences by the impacts of business model and capital expenditure in the global semiconductor industry. Handling the impact of capital expenditure as fixed input by the directional distance estimator, this study compares the operating efficiencies between the integrated device manufacturers and the fabless and foundry firms in the global semiconductor industry over 1999–2018. The estimation results indicate that vertically integrated manufacturers dominate the semiconductor industry, and the capital-intensive companies operate more efficiently than the asset-light fabless firms on average.