31 May 2023
Cork a ‘location of choice’ for semi-conductor investment as tech buyouts continue
Cork has a long history of supporting multinational organisations including semi-conductor creators, an industry that is expected to grow over 12% to $1,380.79 billion by 2029.
Cork and Ireland has been hailed for four key advantages, leading to significant semiconductor investment with more expected to follow:
- Availability of quality talent.
- An abundance of research centres.
- A business-friendly tax environment.
- A long track record of hosting and supporting top U.S. chip companies.
It is the availability of highly skilled labour that particularly sets Cork apart, as over 10000 STEM students graduate from its two major universities each year. In an industry known for its scarce skilled labour supply, Ireland status as the country with the highest level of STEM graduates per capita in the EU puts it front and centre of international investment.
Just some of the investments in Cork’s semiconductor industry were highlighted by EPS News, the number one choice for Electronics purchasing and supply news:
- Microchip Technology invested $20 million in a development center based in Cork. The center incorporates an engineering lab that supports state-of-the-art innovation but another key element of Microchip’s Irish activities is collaboration with leading universities there on skills development programs.
- Texas Instruments operates a power management semiconductor engineering R&D facility called the Cork Power Design Center in Cork, Ireland.
- A major R&D center in Cork is opearted by Qualcomm – a multimillion-euro investment that is joined by onsemi, who have two Irish design centres in Limerick and Cork.
- Top EDA supplier, Cadence, has created an R&D Centre of Excellence in Cork that will employ up to 150 multidisciplinary engineers.
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) raised over $20 million in a recent joint venture with ConsenSys. AMD operate in Cork and Dublin following its acquisition last year of Xilinx, which helped make AMD a leader in high-performance adaptive computing
Encouraged by the presence of these larger outfits, a vibrant start-up scene has emerged which frequently sees buy outs by the larger firms. Over $100 million of Irish start ups were acquired in the last six years, firms like Commergy, Firecomms, GloNav, ChipSensors, Mingoa, Duolog and Redmere.
EPS News highlighted Cork and Ireland’s supportive business environment, praising its;
‘industry collaboration activities among business, government, research and academia which result in a fast-moving environment that rewards American firms doing business there with not just tech talent and new potential products but access to a wealth of funding from Ireland and the broader EU itself‘
EPS News – U.S. & EU Semiconductor Firms Join Forces to Boost CHIPS
