• Applied Materials will expand its advanced packaging joint lab with A*STAR in one of its largest Singapore R&D investments to date.
• Singapore also announced collaborations in silicon photonics, process control, and MEMS, and a national brand for the sector.

Applied Materials will expand its advanced packaging joint laboratory with Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), in what Minister for Trade and Industry (Energy and Industry) Dr Tan See Leng called one of the company’s largest R&D investments in Singapore to date.

Announcing Phase 4 of the partnership at the Innovate Together forum on Friday, Tan said the expansion would significantly increase the lab’s infrastructure, equipment and headcount, supporting deeper research into advanced packaging for AI and advanced computing.

“Advanced packaging is one area where public-private partnerships have produced encouraging results, including spillovers to the wider ecosystem,” Tan said.

The collaboration dates back to 2011 and has run through three phases. Applied Materials has launched more than 10 semiconductor manufacturing tools developed in Singapore through the partnership, most of which have become global bestsellers, according to Tan: the ministry named Ventura, InVia 2 and Kinex among them. Over the past five years, the partnership has also enabled work between A*STAR and about 50 companies, including nine local SMEs, on R&D projects worth S$46 million in industry funding.

Two more advanced packaging collaborations

A*STAR will set up a joint lab with KLA, the US company whose inspection and measurement tools chipmakers use to find defects during production. The lab will develop process control solutions that catch those defects earlier, according to the ministry, with the aim of improving device reliability and manufacturing yield, and will sit with A*STAR’s Institute of Microelectronics. KLA is partway through a US$200 million expansion of its own Singapore operations, due to reach 420,000 square feet this year.

A*STAR will also work with STATS ChipPAC on co-packaged optics, combining A*STAR’s technologies with the assembly and test firm’s manufacturing capabilities to build a pathway towards high-volume production. Co-packaged optics moves the optical components into the chip package itself, which the ministry said would enable faster and more energy-efficient data movement inside AI data centres.

GlobalFoundries returns to A*STAR a year after acquiring its 2017 spin-off

In silicon photonics, A*STAR and GlobalFoundries will collaborate on next-generation technologies built on 300-millimetre wafers, aimed at high-performance computing and, potentially, quantum applications.

For context, the two have a longer history than the announcement suggests. A*STAR spun off Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF) in 2017, and Tan said AMF’s manufacturing assets, intellectual property and talent were what attracted GlobalFoundries to acquire the company in 2025. The agreement announced on Friday brings the foundry back to the agency that created the business it bought.

Separately, the National Centre for Advanced Integrated Photonics, hosted at Nanyang Technological University, will work with Battery Age Minerals on germanium-based optical interconnect technology. The Australian company holds access to raw germanium, and A*STAR said the collaboration creates a potential pathway from upstream resources into higher-value semiconductor applications.

In sensing, Tacta Systems will develop MEMS technologies for robotics using A*STAR’s Lab-in-Fab platform, which lets companies validate technologies in a production-relevant environment before scaling. Tacta has also opened its Singapore operations.

Talent remains the constraint

Tan named talent as the second of two priorities for the sector, alongside industry partnerships.

The Singapore Institute of Technology will pilot a “2+2” model from September 2027, under which students spend their first two years on campus and almost two years in workplace immersion. At the postgraduate level, 14 semiconductor companies have taken part in the Industrial Postgraduate Programme over the past five years, producing close to 100 graduates.

The announcements were made under SG Semiconductor, a national identity for the sector developed jointly by A*STAR and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and launched at the same event. A*STAR said the brand is intended to raise global visibility of Singapore’s capabilities and make the ecosystem easier for companies and talent to navigate, and that the effort will focus on public sector R&D as its first course of action.

“As semiconductor technologies become more complex, companies are increasingly seeking trusted locations where innovation, manufacturing and talent come together,” said Jermaine Loy, managing director of EDB.

Singapore accounts for about one in ten chips produced globally and one in five pieces of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, according to the ministry. “We must not take this position for granted,” Tan said. The sector’s seven priority technology areas span advanced packaging, silicon photonics, power electronics, radio frequency gallium nitride, piezoMEMS, flat optics and integrated circuit design, supported by the S$800 million RIE Flagship in Semiconductors announced earlier this year, which runs from 2026 to 2030.