Rapidus, a Japanese company founded in August 2022, aims to establish 2nm product manufacturing on a contract basis in Japan by 2027. According to the Nikkei Asian Review, the company will begin trial production of 2nm chips at one of Seiko Epson’s facilities in Hokkaido in April 2023, with Rapidus’s own facility expected to be ready by 2027. Rapidus hopes its clientele will include heavyweights like Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla.
In an interview with Nikkei, Rapidus’s Chairman of the Board, Tetsuro Higashi stated, “We are in talks with all major technology companies that provide cloud services or could use 2nm chips in the future.” The Japanese chip manufacturer hopes to ultimately serve companies like Apple, Microsoft, or Tesla. Tesla, an American automaker known for its ambitions of developing its own computational infrastructure for self-driving technology, currently uses chips made by TSMC in its supercomputers. To attract American chip developers, Rapidus opened a representative office in California in April 2023.
Interestingly, Higashi is optimistic about the future of the artificial intelligence industry. While Rapidus initially aimed to increase its revenue to $6.4 billion by 2040, this target has now been accelerated by a decade, shifting to the end of the current decade. Although Rapidus does not yet have concrete targets for expanding its market share, Higashi is confident that the company’s revenue will grow in tandem with the overall market. Backing its research and development efforts, Rapidus will receive around $6 billion from the Japanese government. Building a state-of-the-art facility in Japan will require significant investment, but the company aims to finance this through bank loans, to be guaranteed by the Japanese authorities.
