Nexperia plans to invest $200 million to expand production base in Hamburg, Germany

Nexperia, the world's largest maker of diodes and transistors, announced on Thursday that it would invest $200 million to expand capacity at its main production site in Hamburg, Germany, to produce two wide-bandgap chips, silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN). The investment was made without government subsidies and is a rare example of computer chip investment in Europe under the 2023 EU Chip Act. Since being acquired by WingTech for $3.6 billion in 2018, Nexperia, headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, has come under increasing scrutiny from European governments. In 2022, the British government forced it to divest a factory in Newport due to safety concerns. In 2023, the German government disqualified the company from receiving subsidies for the development of battery efficiency technology.