Bosch To Acquire TSI Semiconductors

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Bosch plans to acquire assets of Roseville, California-baserd U.S. chipmaker TSI Semiconductors.

Led by CEO Oded Tal, TSI is a foundry for application-specific integrated circuits, or ASICs. Currently, the company mainly develops and produces large volumes of chips on 200-millimeter silicon wafers for applications in the mobility, telecommunications, energy, and life sciences industries.

Over the next years, Bosch intends to invest more than 1.5 billion USD in the Roseville site and convert the TSI Semiconductors manufacturing facilities to state-of-the-art processes. Starting in 2026, the first chips will be produced on 200-millimeter wafers based on the innovative material silicon carbide (SiC).

The new location in Roseville will reinforce Bosch’s international semiconductor manufacturing network. Starting in 2026, following a retooling phase, first SiC chips will be produced on 200-millimeter wafers in a facility offering roughly 10,000 square meters of clean-room space. At an early stage, Bosch invested in the development and production of SiC chips. Since 2021, it has been using its own proprietary, highly complex processes to mass-produce them at its Reutlingen location near Stuttgart. In the future, Reutlingen will also produce them on 200-millimeters wafers. By the end of 2025, the company will have extended its clean-room space in Reutlingen from roughly 35,000 to more than 44,000 square meters.

In its wafer fabs in Reutlingen and Dresden, Bosch has invested more than 2.5 billion euros in total since 200-millimeter technology was introduced in 2010. On top of this, billions of euros have been invested in developing microelectronics. Independently of the investment now planned in the United States, the company announced in summer last year that it will be investing a further 3 billion euros in its semiconductor business in Europe, both as part of its investment planning and with the aid of the EU’s “Important Project of Common European Interest on Microelectronics and Communication Technologies” program.

FinSMEs

27/04/2023