TOKYO (Reuters) -Financial firm SBI Holdings said on Wednesday it would help Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (PSMC) establish a factory in Japan as the country looks to revive it chip industry.
SBI will establish a company to aid with planning and fundraising, including lobbying for government subsidies, and will help the chipmaker find a location for a plant that would produce semiconductors for automakers and industrial machinery manufacturers, the Japanese firm’s CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, told reporters.
PSMC will also establish a research lab that will develop more advanced chips, he added at a joint press conference with the Taiwanese company.
SBI’s partnership with PSMC comes as Japan provides billions of dollars in subsidies to foreign chip companies to lure them to build or expand production in Japan.
Japan has already promised 400 billion yen ($2.8 billion) to help Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) , the world’s leading maker of logic chips, build a plant in Kumamoto prefecture that will supply semiconductors to Sony Group and auto parts maker Denso Corp.
It has also offered subsidies to help memory chip makers Kioxia Corp and Western Digital Corp expand output at their plant in Japan, and has given money to U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology to add capacity at its plant in Hiroshima.
Japan is also funding a homegrown venture, Rapidus, which says it plans to produce advanced logic chips from the middle of the decade with help from IBM Corp.
($1 = 144.6100 yen)
(Reporting by Miho Uranaka; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Jamie Freed)
