애플드 머티리얼스는 인도의 반도체 제조 역량 확대를 위해 향후 10년간 50억 달러를 투자하고, 140에커 규모의 연구 단지를 조성하겠다고 밝혔다.

Applied Materials plans to invest $5 billion in India over the coming decade to bolster the country’s semiconductor industry. The U.S.-based chip equipment maker will deploy the capital to establish a 140-acre research park designed to strengthen its research and development efforts, introduce new technologies, and scale up its India-based supply chain tenfold, according to Prabu Raja, president of the company’s Semiconductor Products Group.

Over the past decade, Applied Materials has quadrupled its Indian workforce to more than 7,000 employees while developing chip equipment design, testing, validation, and research capabilities in Bengaluru. “We can invent together and develop a product together. It’s all about speed today. India doesn’t have to take the same amount of time that other countries took [to develop semiconductor capabilities],” Raja said, in comments reported by the Times of India.

The announcement coincided with the Semicon India event held in New Delhi this week. Established by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the three-day conference reportedly hosted more than 600 companies from 52 countries.

The Indian government has sought to accelerate its domestic semiconductor sector through targeted legislation, most notably the Modified Programme for Semiconductors and Display Fab Ecosystem. Authorized in December 2021, the 828 billion rupee ($10bn) scheme allows companies to apply for subsidies covering up to 50 percent of capital costs for eligible semiconductor and display manufacturing projects. In January 2024, the government approved three proposals to build semiconductor manufacturing plants with a combined value of 1.26 trillion rupees ($15.2 billion), following earlier approval for a Micron ATMP (assembly, testing, marking, and packaging) facility. Despite these developments, a planned $10bn chip fab set to be built by Tata Electronics and Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) in Gujarat has been delayed by two years.