Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) plans to build an ￥800 billion (US$5.3 billion) factory in northeast Japan with financing from investment group SBI Holdings Inc and the Japanese government, the latest boost to the nation’s bid to expand its chip manufacturing base.
The factory would require an initial investment of ￥420 billion, of which Powerchip and SBI would pay more than half, the firms said.
The rest would come from investors, bank loans and government subsidies, they said.
Photo: Reuters
The foundry, to be built in Miyagi Prefecture, is to produce mature 40-nanometer and 55-nanometer semiconductors, focusing on automotive chips and power controllers, and is to go online in 2027, the companies said.
Japan, home to Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co, is a heavy user of such chips, produced by the likes of Tokyo-based Renesas Electronics Corp.
“We’ve made preparations to create an unbeatable foundry and build a semiconductor ecosystem,” SBI chief executive officer Yoshitaka Kitao told a news conference yesterday.
SBI is to pay about ￥100 billion of the initial investment and seek another ￥100 billion through a new fund it plans to set up, but will not build a foundry without subsidies, Kitao said.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s administration is paying billions of dollars in subsidies to chipmakers moving production to Japan.
Spurred by the financial support, Powerchip’s bigger rival and industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) is building a factory in southern Japan, with operations expected to begin next year.
US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, and domestic players Kioxia Holdings Corp and Rapidus Corp are also expanding production in the world’s third-largest economy, helped by government support.
“The automotive chips that Powerchip will focus on are precisely the kind of chips used in vehicles today and will help secure this production base,” Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura said at a regular news conference ahead of the investment announcement.
“We want to secure the supplementary budget necessary to strengthen our semiconductor supply chain,” Nishimura added.
Japan, which wants to claw back its former leadership in chips, is benefiting from a shift in global supply chains as manufacturers seek to lower reliance on Taiwan and hedge against rising US-China tensions.
Washington is also offering incentives to chipmakers building capacity in the US, but progress has been slow.
Japan is “the best place” for semiconductor investment, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) said.
With so much capacity coming online in Japan, it remains unclear how companies would be able to secure enough engineering talent, given a weak yen.
Powerchip’s move comes as the chip sector fights to regain its footing from a sharp drop in demand following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Taiwanese contract chipmaker had a tough first half, with little profit due to weak sales.
It reportedly told investors in July that it would be conservative with capacity expansion going forward.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS