Europe’s chip design platform lines up €525 million for fabless startups

The EU-backed EuroCDP aims to give small chip designers tools, funding and a path to manufacturing through 2028 Europe has a new plan to grow its own chip designers, and it comes with a price tag of €525 million. The European Chips Design Platform, known as EuroCDP, is set to mobilize that sum to help fabless startups, small and mid-sized companies, and research groups design semiconductors without first raising a fortune. What EuroCDP actually does EuroCDP sits under the EU Chips Act and is scheduled to run from 2025 to 2028. Belgian research hub imec coordinates the effort, leading a consortium of 12 partners across Europe. That roster includes some of the heaviest names in European applied research: France’s CEA, Germany’s Fraunhofer and Silicon Austria Labs. The platform’s core job is to lower the barriers to entry for companies that design chips but do not own factories. These are known as fabless firms. They sketch the blueprints and rely on someone else to do the actual manufacturing. To help them, EuroCDP offers three main resources. The first is electronic design automation, or EDA, tools. These are the software suites engineers use to design chips. The second is intellect...