Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has announced plans to establish a design and manufacturing base for next-generation semiconductors in order to ensure the competitiveness of Japanese industry and reduce the risk of dependence on Taiwan.Specifically, the Taiwanese, South Koreans and Americans have moved from Planar-FET (45nm to 28nm) to FinFET (22nm to 5nm) and are now working on Gate-All-Around (GAA) (3nm to 2nm and beyond) chip architecture while Japanese logic device makers such as Renesas have lagged.As first announced during US President Biden’s visit to Tokyo last May and elaborated upon in July, when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo met with Japan’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi and Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Koichi Hagiuda in Washington, DC, the R&D effort will involve close bilateral collaboration.Rapidus is a joint venture with eight shareholders: Kioxia, Sony, Softbank, Toyota Motor, Denso, NTT, NEC and Mitsubishi UFJ Bank.Rapidus is led by chairman Tetsuro “Terry” Higashi, the former chairman, president and CEO of Tokyo Electron and director emeritus of SEMI, the international semiconductor equipment and materials industry association, and President Atsuyoshi Koike, former president of Western Digital Japan and senior vice president for technology and fab operations with responsibility for Western Digital’s joint venture with Kioxia."