TSMC has announced the establishment of a European design center in Munich, complementing the ESMC fab currently under construction in Dresden. The new facility will support European customers in taking their designs into manufacturing. As such, it primarily targets automotive, industrial, IoT and telecommunications end-markets. In the future, however, the center could support a European push in AI chips, executive Kevin Zhang said at TSMC’s 2025 Technology Symposium in Amsterdam.
“I’m all for it to build up the semiconductor capability in Europe for AI applications. I do think that there’s great potential. There’s a huge talent pool here to build up that capability. We talked to some of our partners already, to see how TSMC can help. This design center can obviously be leveraged to bring leading-node support, not only just the MCU,” Zhang said at a press briefing on the sidelines of the event, referring to AI-enabled MCUs for edge applications that currently make up European chipmakers’ primary AI products.
Down the line, TSMC would follow up with building additional fabs in Europe, but only if local demand can justify it. “If Europe’s semiconductor demand continues to grow, then certainly we will grow.” Asked whether TSMC is currently considering building additional fabs in Europe, as suggested by a Taiwanese government official last year, Zhang said: “Let’s get this one down first.”
TSMC’s Munich design center is scheduled to open in Q3.
