India’s chip push goes global: Semiconductor heavyweights deepen footprint ahead of SEMICON 2026

For five years, India has worked to attract semiconductor fabs, testing and packaging plants. Now, the ecosystem around them is taking shape. Ahead of SEMICON India 2026, global suppliers of chipmaking equipment, automation and testing technologies are stepping up investments and expanding their India footprint, marking the next phase of the country’s semiconductor push: building the capabilities that will support chipmaking at scale.

US-headquartered Lam Research, a global supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and services, plans to invest about Rs 10,000 crore over the next few years to set up its first silicon component manufacturing facility in India and expand its advanced research and development operations.

The new facility will support a vertically integrated process spanning silicon ingot production and processing for advanced semiconductor technologies and leading-edge nodes. The company is also engaging with local firms for specialised materials, precision components, gases, chemicals, metrology and manufacturing services that are critical to the semiconductor industry.
Lam already has a large engineering hub and advanced chip research and development laboratories in the country.

While Lam is looking to build manufacturing capability in India, other global suppliers are focusing on making their technologies more accessible to companies that will operate the country’s emerging semiconductor facilities.

Japanese automation and semiconductor equipment maker Hirata Corporation, which has worked with India’s ATS India for more than a decade in sectors including automotive, is now formally entering the country’s semiconductor equipment market.

Under a new partnership, ATS India will be Hirata’s exclusive distribution partner in India and will initially offer Hirata’s standard semiconductor automation and material-handling portfolio. This includes equipment front-end modules (EFEMs), fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) load ports, panel-level packaging (PLP) panel-handling robots and high-performance wafer-handling robots used across semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging.

The company says the arrangement will give Indian manufacturers access to globally benchmarked equipment as the country builds its semiconductor manufacturing and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) ecosystem.

John Derzy, Vice President, Hirata Corporation of America, said the collaboration could, over the next two to three years, fundamentally change how Indian manufacturers access and adopt advanced semiconductor equipment technology that has powered semiconductor ecosystems in Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and other advanced manufacturing hubs.

Hirata and ATS plan to focus initially on standard products before moving towards more customised, application-specific solutions as the market matures.

The expansion of the ecosystem is also creating demand further downstream, particularly for technologies that can validate chips as manufacturing scales up.

US-based Teradyne, a designer and manufacturer of automatic test equipment, has opened its first India office dedicated to semiconductor testing in Bengaluru, extending its presence beyond robotics.

As India moves into its next phase, with fabrication and packaging capacity scaling up, the new office will bring advanced test technologies, applications expertise and training closer to the ecosystem, helping build the testing capabilities needed to support high-volume semiconductor manufacturing in the country.