Applied Materials has announced it will increase its stake in Besi to approximately 20 percent. The US company first invested in the Dutch semiconductor assembly equipment maker in April 2025 and describes the holding as long-term. It says it currently has no intention of increasing its stake beyond approximately 20 percent or seeking a seat on Besi’s board.
“Applied Materials is adding to its investment in Besi as hybrid bonding technology and next-generation interconnect architectures become increasingly critical enablers of energy-efficient AI compute performance,” says Prabu Raja, resident of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials.
The vote of confidence comes as Besi battles headwinds, including delayed adoption of hybrid bonding in memory manufacturing and concerns about competition, both of which CEO Richard Blickman downplayed at the latest quarterly results.
Besi and Applied Materials started a hybrid-bonding partnership in 2020. The companies recently expanded their collaboration as the Dutch company joined Applied’s Epic Center as an innovation partner. Their work now also covers thermo-compression bonding, logic and memory integration and new chip-to-wafer, chip-to-chip and chip-to-panel architectures.
