Chips with everything

Germany seems to have taken the spirit of the?European Chips Act ?more seriously than the rest of the bloc. This week, the news came about its investment of €5bn in 台积公司 's new fab in Dresden, slated to start producing 40,000 wafers a month from 2027.

To be precise, 70% of the new venture — known as the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC) — will be owned by the Taiwanese chipmaker. The rest is to be controlled in equal parts by Robert Bosch, Infineon Technologies, and NXP Semiconductors.

The news comes just a couple of months after Germany agreed to?front €10bn in subsidies ?for another chip factory built by Intel. The US giant will spend some €30bn on the project.

It's interesting to note that the money for this chip offensive comes largely from Germany's climate fund . The €20bn taken from that pot will be fully distributed by 2027; for now, we know that among its recipients are Intel, TSMC, and Infineon, as well as automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG and US-based chip company Wolfspeed.

The need for lofty subsidies to attract chipmakers to Germany appears to be dictated by the country's high energy prices, hard-to-navigate bureaucracy, and a shortage of skilled workforce. These issues, however, don't appear unfixable.

All in all, it seems like we're witnessing the inception of a large-scale semiconductor manufacturing industry in Europe. With more facilities?planned in Poland ?and elsewhere, this development can change the balance in the tug of war that this field has become in the past decade — at least when it comes to chips for the automotive industry.

Look for more details in Linnea Ahlgren's piece on TSMC's ESMC ??

???TSMC to enter ‘Silicon Saxony’ with €10B chip plant

What else we’re writing about

?? Developers across the world are?mourning the loss ?of Bram Moolenaar, renowned Dutch software engineer and creator of the Vim text editor. Moolenaar passed away on August 3, 2023, after suffering from a medical condition that “rapidly progressed over the last few weeks.”

?? Even not-so-sophisticated hackers could glean your passwords and messages just by recording you typing on your keyboard. A team of UK researchers has trained a deep learning model to?interpret keystrokes remotely ?based solely on audio. By recording keystrokes to train the model, they were able to predict what was typed on the keyboard with up to 95% accuracy.

?? German startup Marvel Fusion has teamed up with Colorado State University to build the?world’s first facility ?dedicated to commercialising inertial confinement — a type of fusion reaction produced by slamming atoms together many times per second using high-intensity lasers.

?? Europe’s grocery delivery space?is in a state of flux . The European tech community has been following the news about Getir's woes over the past few months. Its fate — and that of the other once high-flying grocery delivery startups — isn’t fully clear but as consolidation and market exits continue, it appears the number of players will be much smaller than before.

?? Fintech is another industry that may see?quite some consolidation ?in Europe in the coming months. The sector has spent the better part of the last decade in growth mode, typified by meaty funding rounds and equally lofty valuations, but now it's facing its own set of challenges in the broader tech downturn. Inflation and higher interest rates mean VCs may be distributing their funds with a little more caution than before.

Keep on shining, people. Until next time!