Japan approves additional .9 billion in subsidies for chip firm Rapidus to meet semiconductor goals

Technology

Japan approves additional $3.9 billion in subsidies for chip firm Rapidus to meet semiconductor goals

Published

2 years ago

April 2, 2024

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Holographic robot arms making semiconductor.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Japan said Tuesday it has approved up to 590 billion yen ($3.89 billion) in additional subsidies for chipmaker Rapidus Corporation, as the country plays catch up with other nations on semiconductor manufacturing.

The latest round of support will include up to 53.5 billion yen for research and development of back-end processes such as chip packaging, according to a press briefing by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on Tuesday.

Rapidus Corporation was founded in 2022 by the Japanese government and eight domestic companies to develop and manufacture advanced semiconductors. Toyota Motor Corporation, Sony Group are among the companies that have invested billions of yen in Rapidus.

Rapidus has received 330 billion yen from the Japanese government between 2022 and 2023 to mass produce 2-nanometer chips in Chitose, Hokkaido, from 2027.

It will compete with industry leaders Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, which plan to start mass production of 2-nanometer chips by 2025.

TSMC and Samsung currently produce 3-nanometer chips, while Rapidus is currently constructing an advanced semiconductor plant in Chitose.

Typically, a reduction in nanometer size can yield more powerful and efficient chips with more transistors packed onto a single semiconductor.

Rapidus said in April 2023 its workers had begun research and development in collaboration with IBM.

Japan has been striving to reclaim its position as a semiconductor powerhouse, which it lost to countries such as Taiwan and South Korea.

“Japan occupied more than half of the global semiconductor market in the 1980s, but other countries have been leading in this industry ever since. While plants in other parts of the world are currently mass producing 3-nm chips, the most advanced generation produced in Japan now is the 40-nm chip,” the Japanese government said in a report last month.

In recent years, the Japanese government has extended significant investment support to attract both domestic and foreign semiconductor companies such as TSMC, Samsung and Micron.

TSMC most recently opened its first chip plant in Japan in February with support from the Japanese government as it diversifies supply chains away from Taiwan amid intensifying U.S.-China trade tensions.

Micron also announced in May 2023 that it will be the first semiconductor company to bring extreme ultraviolet technology to Japan to manufacture its next generation of dynamic random access memory chips at its Hiroshima plant.

Technology

Intel stock holds 10% rise after analyst predicts major Apple deal

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2 hours ago

December 1, 2025

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Intel stock holds 10% rise after analyst predicts major Apple deal

Intel stock held a sharp hike in pretrading on Monday, after the stock surged on Friday when an analyst predicted the chip giant was nearing a deal to supply Apple in 2027.

Shares in Intel rose 10% on Friday after TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted on X that he expected Intel to begin shipping its lowest-end M processor to Apple as early as second or third quarter 2027.

He said that his latest industry surveys indicate that “visibility on Intel becoming an advanced-node supplier to Apple has recently improved significantly.”

Intel stock fell 0.59% as of 6.26am ET on Monday in early pretrading.

Kuo added that the timeline of the partnership is contingent on the development process after Intel releases its process design kit — the blueprint from which Apple’s engineers can build the chips — which is expected early 2026.

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Apple’s silicon chips for its iPhone, iPad and Mac products are currently supplied by TSMC.

In his post, Kuo played down the potential Intel-Apple partnership’s impact on the Taiwanese chip maker, saying that Apple is expected to remain “highly dependent” on the company’s advanced nodes for the “foreseeable future.”

“In absolute terms, order volumes for the lowest-end M processor are relatively small and virtually no material impact on TSMC’s fundamentals or its technology leadership over the next several years.”

Kuo added a deal with Intel would signal strong support from Apple for the Trump administration’s push for its homegrown companies to manufacture in the U.S.

Neither Intel nor Apple immediately responded to a request for comment from CNBC.

‘If Intel pulls it off, there is potential to win higher volume and value business from Apple’

Intel’s stock has seen a resurgence over the past 12 months after years of decline. Share price fell as low as $17.66 in April, before recovering over the past few months.

“Apple is a potential major reference customer whose presence validates Intel’s high-performance foundry offering,” Paul Markham, investment director at GAM Global Equities, told CNBC.

“If Intel pulls it off, there is potential to win higher volume and value business from Apple, for example CPU production for the iPhone, and win business from other large chip designers.”

Intel has had an up and down relationship with Apple since it first announced the chip giant’s processors would power some products in 2005. The iPhone maker transitioned away from the company’s processors at the start of the 2020s.

Last week Intel was on the subject of a lawsuit filed by TSMC, in which it alleged one of its former senior vice president had leaked “confidential information” to the company. Intel did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment at the time.

Technology

How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

Published

23 hours ago

November 30, 2025

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How black boxes became key to solving airplane crashes

After the search for survivors and recovery of victims in tragic aviation accidents — like that of a UPS cargo plane shortly after takeoff from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky last month — comes the search for flight data and a cockpit voice recorder often called the “black box.”

Every commercial plane has them. Aerospace giants GE Aerospace and Honeywell are among a few companies that design them to be nearly indestructible so they can help investigators understand the cause of a crash.

“They’re very crucial because it’s one of the few sources of information that tells us what happened leading up to the accident,” said Chris Babcock, branch chief of the vehicle recorder division at the National Transportation Safety Board. “We can get a lot of information from parts and from the airplane.”

Commercial aircraft have become very complex. A Boeing 787 Dreamliner records thousands of different pieces of information. In the case of the Air India crash in June, data revealed both engine fuel switches were put into a cutoff position within one second of each other. A voice recording from inside the cockpit captured the pilots discussing the cutoffs.

“All of those parameters today can have a very huge impact on the investigation,” said former NTSB member John Goglia. “It’s our goal to to provide information back to our investigators who are on scene as quick as we can to help move the investigation forward.”

This crucial data can also help prevent future accidents. A crash can cost airlines or plane manufacturers hundreds of millions of dollars and leave victims’ families with a lifetime of grief.

But in some circumstances black boxes were destroyed or never found. Experts say further developments such as cockpit video recorders and real-time data streaming are needed.

“The technology is there. Crash worthy cockpit video recorders are already being installed in a lot of helicopters and other types of airplanes, but they’re not required,” said Jeff Guzzetti, aviation analyst and former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB. “There’s privacy and cost issues involving cockpit video recorders but the NTSB has been recommending that the FAA require them for years now.”

Watch the video to learn more.

— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.