4 senior executives on the French semiconductor outfit Ommic SAS are at present below investigation for sharing confidential expertise with entities in China and Russia whereas skirting sanctions and export controls. Two French and two Chinese language residents working on the firm have been positioned below formal investigation since March this yr after the allegation surfaced within the French newspaper Le Parisien.
The French business minister Roland Lescure mentioned that when the federal government warns concerning the danger of commercial espionage, it’s not like enjoying James Bond. Ommic’s expertise portfolio contains gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors, broadly utilized in protection and aerospace electronics for his or her skill to function on excessive voltages and maintain excessive temperatures.
Ommic, situated in Limeil-Brévannes, France, 20 km outdoors Paris, has round 100 workers, and it focuses on steel natural chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) epitaxial progress, wafer processing and fabrication, and monolithic microwave built-in circuits (MMICs) specializing in gallium arsenide (GaAs) and GaN semiconductors.
Le Parisien, which first reported on the case, additionally found {that a} Beijing-based Chinese language businessman with ties to China’s protection business had purchased 94% of Ommic’s shares by way of a French-based funding fund in 2018. French authorities have stripped the bulk stake of this Chinese language investor whereas briefly inserting the corporate below state management earlier than its sale to Macom.
The Lowell, Massachusetts-based chip firm, which designs and manufactures RF, microwave, analog and mixed-signal, and optical semiconductors, paid $42.5 million to accumulate Ommic in Could 2023. “We sit up for constructing upon the prevailing staff’s experience in materials science, semiconductor wafer processing and millimeter-wave MMIC design,” mentioned Macom’s president and CEO Stephen G. Daly.
Based on information reviews, investigators have uncovered practically $13 million price of suspected expertise exports. Right here, the corporate’s French supervisor is suspected of personally delivering chips to Russian shoppers. Furthermore, semiconductors merchandise are suspected to be exported to armament producers in China with the assistance of solid paperwork.
The semiconductor expertise restrictions and export controls have taken a brand new flip with this Bloomberg information report concerning the switch of French expertise to China, particularly when it’s about Ommic’s wafer processing expertise. Semiconductor wafer processing and rising applied sciences like GaN supplies are vital to China’s ambitions of cultivating a strong chip business.
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