SEMICON Europa 2025 took place on 18–21 November in Munich alongside productronica, bringing together the global semiconductor ecosystem to discuss Europe’s role in the worldwide value chain. This year’s theme, “Global Collaborations for European Economic Resilience,” highlighted that strong international partnerships are essential for Europe’s long-term technological growth and economic stability.
The Chip Center was represented at the event by Program Manager Andres Mellik, who took part in the conference programme and met with companies interested in potential cooperation. Several companies, other chip competence centers and regional organizations from Germany also visited the Estonia pavilion hosted by our partner the Estonian Electronics Industries Association to discuss possibilities for manufacturing Estonian-designed chips or participating in collaborative R&D projects.
According to Andres Mellik, SEMICON Europa packed a wide variety of interesting sessions across AI chip design, fab management and semiconductor supply chains, as well as how to increase Europe’s footprint in the global markets as both a producer and consumer of semiconductors. One of the most engaging discussions took place during the Chips Venture Forum, organised by aCCCess, where representatives from Nokia, Siemens, Indra and the venture capital sector explored how Europe can increase its own demand, capacity and funding to advance the semiconductor industry.
The Chips Venture Forum also featured pitching sessions for semiconductor startups. Estonia was represented by Greenbit Tech, where Lauri Paal highlighted the benefits of heat capture in the process of data center computational loads and striving for net zero goals.
Mellik noted that it was striking to see even global technology leaders, such as Google, who in their development of new TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) versions struggle with the very same constraints as startups in trying to outrun the AI train with all its ambiguities and pure unknowns.
What emerged as an opportunity for European deep tech startups is not only to focus on the design of new devices but also develop novel EDA tools in the process that would carry the potential to both provide more streamlined, robust design, verification and test processes – and perhaps become attractive acquisition targets for the Big 3 of the EDA world.
Another key takeaway involved the complexity and resource intensity of semiconductor manufacturing. Panels and technical sessions illustrated the challenges of managing full end-to-end production and fab operations. As Mellik pointed out, industry experts emphasised that building an advanced-node fab in Europe requires nearly twice the time and investment compared to Asia. According to an executive panel of fab builders and supply chain participants it boils down to too much regulation and too few existing building codes that would streamline the process – each fab project requires reinventing the wheel all over again – an argument for a true single market?
For the Chip Center, SEMICON Europa was an important opportunity to gain insight into Europe’s strategic priorities and strengthen the partnerships that support Estonia’s growing role in semiconductor development. The discussions made it clear that Estonia’s capabilities in design, verification and advanced product development will become increasingly relevant as Europe seeks to build a more resilient and competitive semiconductor ecosystem.