TSMC to open chip design centre in Munich, could later support AI development

By Nathan Vifflin

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said on Tuesday it will open a design centre in Munich, Germany, which could at a later date help develop chips via leading manufacturing processes for applications such as artificial intelligence.

President of TSMC Europe, Paul de Bot, said at the company's 2025 Technology Symposium event that the Munich Design Centre would open during the third quarter of 2025.

"It's intended to support European customers in designing high-density, high-performance, and energy-efficient chips with a focus on applications again in automotive, industrial, AI, and IoT," de Bot said.

Europe is currently formulating a strategy to catch up with the U.S. and China on artificial intelligence.

TSMC is building together with Infineon, NXP and Robert Bosch a new 10 billion euro ($11.33 billion) microchip manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany, through a joint venture called European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (ESMC).

When asked if ESMC or the design center could assist in meeting Europe's AI chips ambitions at a later stage, executive Kevin Zhang said TSMC has engaged conversations with its partners.

"I'm all for building up the most semiconductor capability in Europe for AI applications... This design center obviously potentially can be leveraged to bring the leading node support," Zhang said in a press briefing with journalists, referring to advanced processes used to make AI chips, among others.

The Munich centre will work on all ESMC nodes, not exclusively depending on the future customer base, he said.

TSMC joins its largest customer in the Bavarian capital, Apple, which has invested 2 billion euros to build its largest engineering hub in Europe there.

Dresden-based ESMC aims to manufacture chips using smaller manufacturing technology previously unavailable at European chipmakers like Infineon, STMicroelectronics, or NXP.

"We have to be on the ground right here closer. We need to have people here to really directly engage with customers," Zhang added.

($1 = 0.8823 euros)

(Reporting by Nathan Vifflin in Amsterdam, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Jan Harvey)