The UK will invest 1.15 billion euros in its own chip sector

The United Kingdom will invest 1.15 billion euros in its own chip sector. This is reported by the new British Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The investment will be focused on research and chip design.

The United Kingdom will burn between 2023 and 2025 converted 230 million euros in its chip sector. In the coming decade, that amount will grow to 1.15 billion euros. The UK is focusing on segments in which the country is already active. “In our new strategy, we are focusing our efforts on our strengths, for example in areas such as research and design,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The country will announce investment plans for chip production around autumn.

The UK’s investment plans will focus on chip design, among other things. Arm, for example, is a British company; it sells designs and instruction set architectures used in Apple smartphone chips and Macs, among others. Today, Arm is owned by Japan’s SoftBank, although Arm’s headquarters are still in Cambridge. The UK is also going to focus on compound semiconductors, which consists of several elements. Examples thereof are gallium nitride, which is used in chargers, for example, and silicon-germanium.

The UK’s plans follow chip laws from several other countries and regions, including Europe and the United States. Countries want to be less dependent on other regions because of rising geopolitical tensions. The EU recently reached an agreement for its Chips Act, which will free up 43 billion euros for the chip sector. That money is made available, among other things, as a subsidy for chip manufacturers in the hope that they will build chip factories in Europe. The US allocated $52.7 billion for indigenous chip production last year.