Singapore Opens VSMC's $7.8 Billion Specialty Chip Fab, With Volume Production Due in Early 2027
The Vanguard and NXP joint venture inaugurated its first 300mm plant in Tampines on Monday, built in 22 months and aimed at power management, analog and interposer chips rather than leading-edge processors.
Outspoken Digest Technology Desk
Monday, September 28, 2026/2 min read
VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the Singapore joint venture of Taiwan's Vanguard International Semiconductor and the Dutch group NXP, held the grand opening of its first 300mm fab in Tampines on Monday. TechNode reports that the total initial build-out is $7.8 billion and that the plant has been inaugurated ahead of volume production in the first quarter of 2027.
What the plant makes
This is not a leading-edge factory. The fab will run process technologies from 130 nanometres down to 40 nanometres, licensed from TSMC, for mixed-signal, power management, analog and embedded chips. It will also make interposers, the silicon layers used in advanced packaging for high-performance computing. The end markets listed by the company are mobile, automotive, industrial and consumer products.
The first sample lot has already reached yields above 99 percent, and the site is in risk production. At full capacity, expected in 2029, it should turn out about 44,000 twelve-inch wafers a month and employ roughly 1,600 people, with around three quarters of the roles professional or technical, according to TechNode.
Who owns it and who paid
The venture was formed in September 2024. Vanguard holds 60 percent and NXP 40 percent. Of the $7.8 billion, Vanguard's contribution is $2.4 billion and NXP's is $1.6 billion, with additional funding and loans to follow. Futurum's analysis notes that the plant took 22 months to build and that the planned capacity of 44,000 wafers a month is about 20 percent below the 55,000 announced in 2024.
The same analysis argues that the structure suits NXP, which secures committed specialty capacity at roughly half the capital spending of building a standalone fab. NXP chief executive Rafael Sotomayor put it in company terms: the plant "enhances our geographic resilience, supply control, and cost competitiveness." Vanguard and VSMC chairman Leuh Fang said it leaves the group "better positioned to meet customers' growing demand for specialty IC manufacturing."
Singapore's role
The opening was attended by Trade and Industry Minister Tan See Leng, who described the pace of construction as "a record for Singapore" and said the fab would reinforce the country's place in the global chip supply chain. Chips of this kind rarely make headlines, yet they sit inside cars, power supplies and industrial equipment, and a supply shock in them can idle assembly lines as surely as a shortage of the most advanced processors.
The trade-off is plain in the numbers. A capacity target trimmed by a fifth suggests a more cautious reading of demand than in 2024, while the interposer line ties the plant to the AI hardware boom. Production ramps through 2027, so the real test will be how quickly customers fill the wafers.
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