Kishida meets Intel, TSMC, Micron execs as Japan joins chip race

PRIME Minister Fumio Kishida met with the heads of the world’s largest chipmakers on Thursday (May 18), as the country shores up support for semiconductor manufacturing capacity at home.

Intel chief Patrick Gelsinger and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) chairman Mark Liu joined the meeting along with executives from Samsung Electronics, Micron Technology and IBM. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura and Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara were among government officials present.

Japan is bolstering advanced chipmaking at home for cutting-edge chips amid growing US-China tensions and as concern grows about over-reliance on Taiwan, which China claims as its own.

The government is expected to support Micron’s next-generation memory chip plant in Hiroshima with financial incentives of about 200 billion yen (S$1.95 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.

TSMC has teamed up with Sony Group to build a new plant in Kumamoto prefecture which is expected to cost about US$8 billion. The Taiwanese contract chipmaker has also said it is considering a second plant.

The government is also supporting a new chip venture, Rapidus to help reboot the country’s semiconductor industry. Backed by Toyota Motor, Sony Group and six other Japanese companies, Rapidus signed a partnership with IBM to develop the US firm’s leading-edge 2-nanometre technologies. BLOOMBERG