Germany would allocate 20 billion euros for investments in the chip industry in the country. A portion has already been awarded to Intel and TSMC would also get a large share of the pie.

Germany is providing 20 billion euros for investment in the country’s chip industry. Bloomberg knows this, but has not yet been confirmed for the Germans themselves. Most of the funds have already been allocated. It was previously announced that Germany is subsidizing Intel with 10 billion euros, which in return will build a new, state-of-the-art factory in Magdeburg.

TSMC also claims a large part of the pie. The world’s largest microchip manufacturer is reportedly considering a production site near Dresden that specializes in building microcontrollers for the German automotive industry. The site is valued at €10 billion, half of which the government is willing to pay. In addition, Germany is examining a handful of smaller projects and three billion euros are left for other plans.

EU chips law

With the investments, Germany wants to ensure that its own industry no longer suffers when the supply chain comes to a standstill and chips do not flow sufficiently from the production sites in Asia. This strategic independence is also a goal of the EU, which has adopted a plan for this that appears very naive in view of the German initiative.

The European Chips Act is intended to bring more chip production into the EU and create a framework in which all EU member states can pull together. Germany did not receive this memo, although we can hardly blame this country. After all, the chips law is a nice piece of text with little impact: when it was passed, the EU managed to set aside almost three billion euros. In the long term, Europe wants to increase that to 43 billion euros, which is still not much considering what Germany alone is investing.