Bloomberg
Infineon Technologies AG is preparing to open its largest single investment, a 5 billion euro (US$5.8 billion) semiconductor factory built with the help of EU subsidies, as the bloc seeks to boost chip production.The power chip fab, which is an extension of the German company’s Dresden campus, is scheduled to open on July 2, Infineon chief operating officer Alexander Gorski said this week at the site.The project is a major recipient of EU Chips Act funds, receiving about 1 billion euros in subsidies.
Workers are pictured at the new Infineon Technologies AG Smart Power Fab in Dresden, Germany, on Wednesday.
The new plant represents a rare success for the bloc’s flagship semiconductor law, which was drawn up during hardware shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of doubling the EU’s share of global chip production to 20 percent by 2030.However, the act has fallen short of its ambitions and key projects, such as a cutting-edge fab operated by Intel Corp in the German city of Magdeburg, were called off despite generous subsidies.
Brussels has drafted a new version of the act in a fresh attempt to bolster investment in the sector.The effort is a pillar of the EU’s technology sovereignty strategy, a plan to reduce the continent’s dependencies on Chinese and US technologies by investing in local champions and favoring EU-made tech products such as chips or cloud services over foreign alternatives.Infineon, traditionally a chipmaker for the automotive industry, has increasingly benefited from soaring demand for power chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, which are to be produced at the new facility.“The AI data centers currently being built and planned around the world will consume twice as much electricity in 2030 as they do today,” Gorski said. “That’s as much as the entire Federal Republic of Germany.”Chip production at the Dresden fab would be scaled depending on demand, potentially adding as much as 5 billion euros in revenue per year, Gorski said, declining to comment on when full capacity would be reached.The company has invested about 2 billion euros on construction and the rest would be spent to add more machines, he said.
