EU opens €525m chip design platform with Synopsys tools on launch day

Brussels opens a €525m design platform

Henna Virkkunen, the Commission vice-president for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, announced the launch at the platform's kickoff in Brussels. The money splits in two. Of the €525m, €440m comes as public investment in the form of grants from the Commission and its member states. The other €85m pays for the cloud platform's infrastructure, the operation of support services and the development of open-source design tools. The platform is one of the main initiatives under the EU Chips Act, agreed in 2023. That law aims to strengthen the bloc's semiconductor ecosystem and raise the EU's share of global production capacity. The platform is meant to help Europe close the gap with the United States and China.

The gap is in design, not only in fabs

The money targets the part of the chain where Europe is weakest. European chip design companies generate less than 1% of worldwide chip design revenue, according to the Commission. For a startup, the difference is concrete: tools and IP it could not license alone, and a grant that covers part of development.

Virkkunen put the link plainly at the launch: "We know that Europe cannot strengthen its position in the global semiconductor industry if we fail to succeed in chip development". The Commission's press release says new manufacturing capacity in Europe is only sustainable with corresponding demand, and much of that demand must come from European design firms.

What the platform adds is access: design tools, IP blocks, support services, prototyping help and manufacturing capacity, not just cash.

Synopsys signs up on launch day

Synopsys said on 4 November that it had agreed with the Chips Joint Undertaking to open its electronic design automation software to startups and SMEs. The tools will be offered through the European Chip Design Platform. The announcement came at the Technology Sovereignty Package in Practice event in Brussels.

Jari Kinaret, executive director of the Chips Joint Undertaking, said Europe's next generation of semiconductor innovation "will come from organizations of many different sizes, not only established chip companies". Synopsys cites work with Axelera AI, Openchip and SiPearl. Axelera used its digital design, implementation and verification tools for the Metis and Europa AI processing units, with power-integrity technology from Ansys, now part of Synopsys.

Cheaper access to tools lowers one barrier. It says nothing about the others.

Grants, tools and open questions

Advanced startups can receive grants of up to €16m to cover the high cost of chip development. The €16m ceiling sits inside the €440m grants envelope, so the size of the average award will decide how far the money stretches. Applications are open to startups and companies.

The design platform is one piece of a wider subsidy programme. In mid-July the Commission approved German plans to support four semiconductor facilities with a total of €659m, more than the entire design budget. A Chips Act 2.0 was announced in early June in the European Technological Sovereignty Package, intended to lift chip demand and support advanced production in the EU.

Neither the Commission nor the Chips Joint Undertaking has said how many companies will qualify for support, or when the first grants will be paid out. The €525m is a commitment to design. It is not yet a schedule.