EE Times Europe

Tokyo, Japan,  4 December 2025, Vicinity Technologies Limited and NXP® Semiconductors today showcased a major advancement in industrial 5G performance at the 5G-ACIA “Industrial 5G Day 2025” held at the Miraikan in Tokyo.

When the European Chips Act came into force in September 2023, it was hailed as Europe’s most ambitious industrial policy in decades. Its promise was bold: Double Europe’s share of global semiconductor production to 20% by 2030 and restore technological sovereignty in a field long dominated by the U.S. and Asia. EE Times Europe reached out to the European Commission (EC) to find out what may come next.

The global semiconductor industry is on track to reach $1 trillion in revenue by 2030. Acknowledging the strategic value of semiconductor technologies and aiming to reduce external dependencies, governments around the world have introduced “chips acts” and sizable incentive packages to support the return of chip design and manufacturing to their own regions. In Europe, the quest for technological sovereignty has become a major investment focus.

Europe’s science and technology landscape is vibrant. From the quantum labs of Delft to the AI hubs of Edinburgh, we continue to generate ideas that could reshape industries. But ideas alone don’t build companies. What transforms a breakthrough into a business is the quality of its support, especially from investors. As someone who’s spent a career bridging science and finance, I’ve seen how fragile the early stages of building a company can be.

IQM Quantum Computers announced it will invest more than €40 million to expand its production site in Espoo, Finland, and build up to 30 full-stack quantum computers per year. The company said it expects the project to be completed in the first quarter of 2026. Once completed, the site will span 8,000 square meters, nearly doubling both cleanroom space and system assembly line capacity.

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang noted in an interview earlier this year that building sovereign AI infrastructure is “more important than developing the atomic bomb,” he wasn’t indulging in hyperbole; he was capturing a profound shift in how nations now define power and security in the digital age. Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the backbone of economic productivity, industrial competitiveness, and national defense.

Back in 2021, Apple chose central Munich to locate its 30,000-square-meter European Silicon Design Center, committing more than €1 billion to wireless R&D. Munich was already the tech giant’s largest European base; Apple had acquired Intel’s Germany modem business and employed more than 1,000 engineers in the city. Today, Apple’s investment in its Munich design center totals at least €2 billion.

As quantum and analog neuromorphic systems move closer to commercialization, new architectures continue to expand the definition of what computing can be. “Usually, at CEA-Leti, research teams plan five years ahead, but in this case, it’s more like 10 years,” Éléonore Hardy, silicon photonics partnership manager at CEA-Leti, told EE Times Europe at the Silicon Photonics Workshop co-organized by CEA-Leti and Soitec alongside ECOC 2025 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

At the Silicon Photonics Workshop co-organized by CEA-Leti and Soitec alongside ECOC 2025 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting, said the acceleration of AI is redefining demand patterns, investment cycles, and technology choices across optical connectivity. “The AI race is on,” he noted, describing a market where intense competition and fear of falling behind are fueling unprecedented levels of spending.

The primary purpose of a self-driving car is to operate without a driver, yet situations still arise where human control is needed. At the recent The Autonomous conference in Vienna, Roboauto CEO Jakub Juza argued that teleoperation—remote control of vehicles by trained human operators—offers a practical bridge to autonomous driving. “Our team has been in teleoperation and autonomous driving for more than eight years, and still, autonomy isn’t the end game,” Juza said in his keynote.