Written by Toby Stirling
ANTWERP, Belgium (Reuters) – European chip law is on track to help attract more than 100 billion euros ($108.41 billion) of private investment into Europe’s semiconductor industry by 2030, a European Commission official said on Wednesday.
Thomas Skordas was speaking at a conference in Antwerp about the future of the initiative, which is Europe’s response to similar plans in the United States and Japan, as well as China’s support for domestic computer chip makers.
Skordas said the European Chip Act “promises investments of around 100 billion euros to expand manufacturing capacities in the EU by 2030.”
The European Union’s chip bill, which promises to provide 43 billion euros in funding, is highly dependent on national governments, with the European Commission having so far approved little actual funding.
But companies such as Intel and TSMC have announced plans this year to spend more than 30 billion euros to build factories in Germany.
Skordas, the European Commission digital official, said the Commission plans to complete funding for research and development pilot lines in four subsectors of the chip industry by September, including 2.5 billion euros in subsidies for the development of highly advanced chips in Europe.
Skordas said funding is still underway for another pilot line to develop photonics, or chips that use light instead of electricity.
The European Commission is also arranging funding for a European design platform to give companies, academia and start-ups access to the software tools they need to design their own chips. Most advanced chipmakers design the chips but leave manufacturing to specialized companies like TSMC, Samsung, and Intel.
“In July we will start calling for consortia to design and develop this platform at European level,” Skordas said.
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(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
