The UK has left the European Union, but semiconductor development is emerging as one of the areas where it hopes to work together for better economies of scale — and much-needed funding.
Today, the government announced that it has joined the E.U.Joint Venture Chipsas a “participating state” so that organizations in the UK can tap into a €1.3 billion (about $1.4 billion) pool of semiconductor research and development. The UK itself has said it will provide a more modest 35 million pounds ($44 million) in funding to UK efforts over the next few years as part of this.
Of this, £5m will initially go towards helping organisations—researchers or businesses operating in the UK— Apply to access funds, the government said on Wednesday. The extra £30 million will be allocated between 2025 and 2027 to fund further research.
Chips are an essential – and therefore very valuable – building block for the development of the future of technology, whether it’s advances in artificial intelligence that require massive computing power, the development of new consumer electronics or the next generation of cars.
But in a sign of how fragmented – or more charitably, competitive – the semiconductor development space currently is, the government has estimated there are “tens of thousands of UK companies” eligible for grants, worth up to £450,000 on average.
The application deadline, if you’re reading this and interested, is May 14th.
The UK’s move highlights how the post-Brexit country has had to face the fact that in technology it cannot afford to go it alone. The news follows commitments the UK has made with countries such as Korea (to share data), Canada (for science and innovation) and the US (a broad technology and data agreement).
In Europe, budgets are big, but also a bit confusing. The Chips joint venture, for example, has a total budget of around €11 billion from both public and private sector contributions. It is his same product European Chips Actadopted in 2023 to help the region, in the long term, reduce its dependence on semiconductor imports, especially in light of geopolitical tensions and how these may play out in the supply chain.
The business’s R&D department, meanwhile, is described as part of it Horizon Europe, which is a larger multi-sectoral R&D program with a budget of €95.5 billion. The UK joined Horizon Europe separately last year and companies already receiving grants from it include Nova Innovation, which has raised £17 million to develop tidal energy in Orkney, and ‘The Floow’, a startup which received 3 £millions for road safety technology.
UK Technology Minister Saqib Bhatti, who announced the country’s new partnership at a semiconductor conference in London on Wednesday, told TechCrunch that while the obvious benefit for UK organizations is access to EU funding , his contribution will be limited – cutting edge research.
Indeed, in the current chip race for more powerful, yet more efficient, chips to handle larger computing workloads for artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies, the reckoning is that R&D will be an even more valuable factor.
“We bring to the table a huge variety of talent, a huge variety of experience,” he said. “I’m meeting businesses at the moment in the semiconductor industry and the conversation is very much around investing in the UK and leveraging our ecosystems, getting involved in R&D. We really cannot underestimate the power of the R&D aspect. We very much come to the table as an equal partner.”
The UK has been a major player in cutting-edge chip research, but as with other categories of tech hardware, the overall market is dominated by a small number of companies and this has affected the particular ecosystem.
Cambridge-based Arm, a major player in chip reference design, recently saw a successful float as a public company after a proposed sale to global chip giant Nvidia collapsed over antitrust concerns (Nvidia however has quietly amassed a stake in the company independently).
Graphcore, a promising startup from Bristol that has positioned itself as a major competitor in the market, is According to reports now it’s looking for a buyer at a fraction of its multi-billion dollar value.
However, other interesting smaller, future players remain. In December 2023, Pragmatic Semiconductor, another Cambridge-based chip company, raised $231 million at a valuation of $500 million. The UK government was among the major investors in this round.
“We are very pleased to welcome the UK to the Chips Joint Undertaking as a participating country,” Jari Kinaret, chief executive of Chips JU, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with our UK partners to develop the European industrial ecosystem in microelectronics and its applications, contributing to scientific excellence and the continent’s leadership in innovation in semiconductor technologies and related areas.”
