World’s No. 2 chip fab toolmaker to develop India as R&D hub, supplier base
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Applied Materials Inc., the world’s second-largest toolmaker for semiconductor fabrication units, is working with more than a dozen international and domestic suppliers to set up manufacturing in India, said Prabu Raja, president of the semiconductor products group at the California-headquartered company.
In an exclusive conversation with Mint, the top executive, who is spearheading a $400 million investment into India announced in 2023, said the company’s plan to set up a research and development (R&D) centre in the country was taking shape and will help in faster validation of quality of materials that go into chipmaking. Also read | India woos chipmakers with $500bn market by 2030, new incentives soon “We’re working with 15 international and domestic suppliers on how they can manufacture in the country, because typically we want our suppliers to be close to us because the speed of R&D determines speed of product development, which is also why we’re working to open the validation centre because labs will be needed to validate the products and R&D," Raja said.
The $26 billion revenue company had announced the setting up a centre of excellence for artificial intelligence (AI) and data science in Chennai earlier this month. That, Raja said, was aimed at making India the hub of its R&D as well as training activities, especially involving AI.
“As much as we are enabling AI with manufacturing the chips, we also use a lot of AI right from developments, simulations and maintaining the tools, how our customer factories are run. So, we are bringing this center of excellence as a hub where there can be development and training," he added.
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