2022
On 10 August 2022, Rapidus was established by eight Japanese companies with total investment of 7.3 billion yen[14] for domestic production of advanced semiconductors; with further investments totaling $36 billion expected over a decade.[15][16] Rapidus is led by Tetsuro Higashi (who formerly led Tokyo Electron)[17] and Atsuyoshi Koike (who formerly led Western Digital's Japanese subsidiary).[18] In the same year, METI and the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) publicly solicited applications for advanced semiconductor development consignment projects related to strengthening the foundation of post-5G communication systems, which resulted in 70 billion yen of government subsidies for Rapidus.[19][20]
On 6 December 2022, the Belgium-based Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) announced it had signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with Rapidus, where both companies will set up a long-term and sustainable collaboration on advanced semiconductor technologies, while Rapidus would plan to mass-produce chips in 2-nanometer technology in Japan in the latter half of 2020s.[21][22][23][24]
On 13 December 2022, IBM and Rapidus announced the development of 2 nanometer node technology, with production of the nanosheet gate-all-around FET (GAA FET) devices previously announced by IBM in 2021[13][25] to be done by Rapidus at its fab in Japan.[26][27][28][29] The 2 nm semiconductor chips which Rapidus is aiming to produce are expected to have up to 45% better performance and use 75% less energy compared to 7 nm chips on the market in 2022.[30]
2023
In January 2023, representatives of Rapidus and IBM participated in a meeting between Japanese Trade Minister Hagiuda's successor, Yasutoshi Nishimura, and Secretary Raimondo.[31]
In February 2023, Rapidus announced the selection of a site close to the New Chitose Airport in Chitose, Hokkaido for the location of its planned factory.[32][33] Rapidus also increased its partnership with IMEC by joining the latter's "Core Partner Program" in April 2023,[34][35] and in the same month received additional funding of 260 billion yen from the Japanese government.[36]
2024
On January 22, 2024, Rapidus opened a Chitose office to handle communications and contracts with construction companies and equipment delivery companies related to factory construction. The address is "NTT Chitose Building, 2-16 Chiyodacho, Chitose City, Hokkaido".[48]
According to a February 27, 2024 Bloomberg article, Rapidus announced that it has been contracted to produce next-generation AI chips from Canadian startup Tenstorrent.[49] Tenstorrent is the first customer announced by Rapidus.[50][51] The architecture that Tenstorrent outsourced to Rapidus for production and development is based on RISC-V, and its benefits are close to what the university stakeholders, who are the main members of Japan's Leading-edged Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC), desire (because of its open Instruction set architecture). Furthermore, the biggest challenge in the relevant architecture is said to be the optimization of the calculation pipeline, and maximizing microfabrication technology is also an important issue in order to realize a multi-stage pipeline.
2025
The Japanese government allocated 802.5 billion yen (US$5.4 billion) in subsidies for Rapidus in fiscal year 2025.[57][58]
Pilot line testing began on April 1.[59] Rapidus unveiled a 300 mm wafer containing their first 2nm prototypes on July 18;[60] the density of Rapidus' 2nm chips are reportedly 237.31 MTr/mm².[61]
