STMicroelectronics NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. It was founded in 1987 from the merger of two state-owned semiconductor corporations, Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy. The company is incorporated in the Netherlands and headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland. Its shares are traded on Euronext Paris, the Borsa Italiana and the New York Stock Exchange.[3] It manufactures a wide range of microelectronics, including the widely-used STM8 and STM32 microcontrollers.
History
ST was formed in 1987 by the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies: Italian SGS Microelettronica (where SGS stands for Società Generale Semiconduttori, "General Semiconductor Company"), and French Thomson Semiconducteurs, the semiconductor arm of Thomson.[4]
SGS Microelettronica originated in 1972 from a previous merger of two companies:
Thomson Semiconducteurs was created in 1982 by the French government's widespread nationalization of industries following the election of François Mitterrand to the presidency. It included:
At the time of the merger of these two companies in 1987, the new corporation was named SGS-THOMSON and was led by chief executive officer Pasquale Pistorio.[5] The company took its current name of STMicroelectronics in May 1998 following Thomson's sale of its shares. After its creation ST was ranked 14th among the top 20 semiconductor suppliers with sales of around US$850 million.
STMicroelectronics participated in the consolidation of the semiconductor industry from the start; it bought the following companies between 1989 and 2007, for instance:
On 8 December 1994, the company completed its initial public offering on the Paris and New York stock exchanges. Owner Thomson SA sold its stake in the company in 1998 when the company also listed on the Italian Bourse in Milan. In 2002, Motorola and TSMC joined ST and Philips in a new technology partnership. The Crolles 2 Alliance was created with a new 12" wafer manufacturing facility located in Crolles, France.
In 2005, chief executive officer Pasquale Pistorio was succeeded by Carlo Bozotti, who then headed the memory products division and had been with the company’s predecessor since 1977.[5] By 2005, ST was ranked fifth, behind Intel, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba, but ahead of Infineon, Renesas, NEC, NXP Semiconductors and Freescale. The company was the largest European semiconductors supplier, ahead of Infineon and NXP.
Early in 2007, NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips Semiconductors) and Freescale (formerly Motorola Semiconductors) decided to stop their participation in Crolles 2 Alliance. Under the terms of the agreement the Alliance came to an end on December 31, 2007.[8] On May 22, 2007, ST and Intel created a joint venture in the memory application called Numonyx: this new company merged ST and Intel Flash Memory activities. Semiconductor market consolidation continued with ST and NXP announcing on April 10, 2008, the creation of a new joint venture of their mobile activities, with ST owning 80% of the new company and NXP 20%. This joint venture began on August 20, 2008. On February 10, 2009, ST Ericsson, a joint venture bringing together ST-NXP Wireless and Ericsson Mobile Platforms, was established.[9]
ST Ericsson was a multinational manufacturer of wireless products and semiconductors, supplying to mobile device manufacturers.[10] ST-Ericsson was a 50/50 joint venture of STMicroelectronics and Ericsson established on February 3, 2009, and dissolved on August 2, 2013. Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, it was a fabless company, outsourcing semiconductor manufacturing to foundry companies.
In 2011, ST announced the creation of a joint lab with Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. The lab focuses on research and innovation in biorobotics, smart systems and microelectronics.[11] Past collaborations with Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies included DustBot, a platform that integrated self-navigating "service robots" for waste collection.[11]
In 2015, the MEMS division of ST was ranked as the biggest European competitor of Silex Microsystems.[12]
In 2018, chief executive Carlo Bozotti was succeeded by Jean-Marc Chery.[13] In 2023, STMicroelectronics partnered with Synopsys to design a working chip on Microsoft Corp’s cloud, marking the first time AI software had been utilized for chip design.[14]
In 2024, ST became the sixth shareholder of Quintauris, a joint company with the goal of standardizing RISC-V ecosystem.[15]
In 2025, Italy is set to appoint Marcello Sala, head of the economy ministry's department overseeing state-run firms and asset disposals, to the supervisory board of chipmaker STMicroelectronics. The proposed nomination will be approved by STMicroelectronics' supervisory board and shareholders at a general meeting in May. The Italian government seeks more oversight over STMicroelectronics, particularly as the company plans a $300 million cost-cutting program that could lead to more than 2,000 job cuts in Italy.[16] According to the company, 1,000 of the 2,800 positions to be eliminated around the world will be in France.[17]
On June 3, 2025, the ST division of France's General Confederation of Labour published a letter to ST leadership criticising their relationship with Israel's military in the context of the Gaza genocide, such as the "ST-Up" startup incubator, which has been linked to "infiniDome", a startup developing GPS technology for drones, and "Lidwave", a startup developing real-time 4D mapping services, both allegedly intended for use by the IDF.[18] As part of industrial action, CGT members at an STMicroelectronics factory in France engaged in a work stoppage against the company’s provision of chips and semiconductors for the Israeli military.[19]
- ATES (Aquila Tubi e Semiconduttori), a vacuum tube and semiconductor maker headquartered in L'Aquila, the regional capital of the region of Abruzzo in Southern Italy, which in 1961 changed its name to Azienda Tecnica ed Elettronica del Sud and relocated its manufacturing plant in the Industrial Zone of Catania, in Sicily;
- Società Generale Semiconduttori (founded in 1957 by Italian engineer, politician, and industrialist Adriano Olivetti).
- the semiconductor activities of the French electronics company Thomson;
- in 1985 it bought Mostek, a US company founded in 1969 as a spin-off of Texas Instruments, from United Technologies;
- Silec, founded in 1977;
- Eurotechnique, founded in 1979 in Rousset, Bouches-du-Rhône as a joint-venture between Saint-Gobain of France and US-based National Semiconductor;
- EFCIS (Étude et la Fabrication de Circuits Intégrés Spéciaux), founded in 1972 at CEA-Leti;
- SESCOSEM, founded in 1969.
- in 1989: British company Inmos, known for its transputer microprocessors, from parent Thorn EMI;
- in 1994: Canada-based Nortel's semiconductor activities;
- in 1999: UK-based VLSI-Vision CMOS Image Sensor research & development company, a spin-out of Edinburgh University. Incorporated on 1 January 2000, the company became STMicroelectronics' Imaging Division, currently part of the Analog MEMS and Sensors business group;
- in 2000: WaferScale Integration Inc. (WSI, Fremont, California), a vendor of EPROM and flash-memory-based programmable system chips;[6]
- in 2002: Alcatel's Microelectronics division, which along with the incorporation of smaller ventures such as UK company Synad Ltd helped the company expand into the Wireless-LAN market;
- in 2007: US company Genesis Microchip.[7] Genesis Microchip is known for their strength in video processing technology (
Shareholders
As of December 31, 2014, the shareholders were:[20]
- 68.4% public (New York Stock Exchange, Euronext Paris, Borsa Italiana Milano);
- 4.1% treasury shares;
- 27.6% STMicroelectronics Holding B.V.:
- 50% FT1CI (Bpifrance 79.2% and French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) 20.8%; previously );
- 50% Ministry of Economy and Finance of Italy.
Manufacturing facilities
Unlike fabless semiconductor companies, STMicroelectronics owns and operates its own semiconductor wafer fabs. The company owned five 8-inch (200 mm) wafer fabs and 1 12-inch (300 mm) wafer fab in 2006. Most of the production is scaled at 0.18 μm, 0.13 μm, 90 nm and 65 nm (measurements of transistor gate length). STMicroelectronics also owns back-end plants, where silicon dies are assembled and bonded into plastic or ceramic packages.[21]
Major sites include:
Grenoble, France
Grenoble is one of the company's most important R&D centres, employing around 4,000 staff. The Polygone site employs 2,200 staff and is one of the historical bases of the company (ex SGS). All the historical wafer fab lines are now closed but the site hosts the headquarters of many divisions (marketing, design, industrialization) and a R&D centre, focused on silicon and software design and fab process development.[22]
The Crolles site hosts a 200 mm and a 300 mm fab and was originally built as a common R&D centre for submicrometre technologies as part of the 1990 Grenoble 92 partnership between SGS-Thomson and
Other sites
Administrative headquarters
- Geneva, Switzerland: Corporate headquarter which hosts most of the ST top management. It totals some hundred of employees.
- Paris: Marketing and support.
Regional headquarters
- Coppell, Texas: US headquarters.
- Singapore: Headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region.
- Tokyo: Headquarters for Japan and Korea operations.
- Shanghai: Headquarters for China operations.[39]
Assembly plants
See also
- Altitude SEE Test European Platform (ASTEP)
- Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC)
- Numonyx
- ST-Ericsson
- List of semiconductor fabrication plants
- STM8
- STM32
- STMicroelectronics Small Shareholders' Group (STM.S.S.G.)
- Collectif Autonome et Démocratique de STMicroelectronics (CAD-ST)
External links
References
- 2024 Annual Report (Form 20-F) U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 27 February 2025, retrieved 27 February 2025^
- St Microelectronics - A European Semiconductor Conglomerate retrieved 2025-08-22^
- Stock data - STMicroelectronics