\n<\/p>\n
In an industry where global giants spend billions on facilities and talent, small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore\u2019s semiconductor sector need every edge they can get.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to allow such companies to have an unfair advantage,\u201d Prof Yeo said. \u201cBy allowing them to leverage our investment, it lowers the barrier to their R&D and to their ability to innovate and provide solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singapore metalens firm MetaOptics is one company that has tapped that support for talent, intellectual property and R&D efforts.<\/p>\n
Its CEO Aloysius Chua said raising money remains difficult for young technology companies, regardless of where they are based.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our early supporters are some of the SMEs in Singapore, and then also we have strong support from A*STAR,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
MetaOptics, which has since gone public and taken its products overseas, develops technology for producing flat optical components that can be used in applications ranging from cameras and sensors to high-speed computing connections.<\/p>\n
Semiconductor equipment manufacturer NexGen Wafer Systems has similarly benefited from access to shared infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Its CEO Cheung Ting Kwan said building all the facilities the company requires itself would mean investing in its own clean room and other specialised equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we do it ourselves, this becomes quite prohibitive, expensive for a small- and medium-sized company like us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But access to infrastructure and talent solves only part of the problem.<\/p>\n
For Singapore semiconductor companies, another obstacle is finding enough customers to turn specialised technologies into sustainable businesses.<\/p>\n
Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF), a Singapore company working in silicon photonics, was acquired by multinational chipmaker GlobalFoundries last year.<\/p>\n
Finding customers for niche technologies was a challenge, said AMF co-founder Patrick Lo.<\/p>\n
“We like to build the fab infrastructure, but want it to be fully utilised,\u201d said Mr Lo, who is now a senior fellow of technology development and advanced photonics at GlobalFoundries.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat full utilisation will be absolutely coming from the application side. This is something I like Singapore as a whole, actually, to have more designers come up, more product developers to leverage.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is a challenge some companies are also grappling with as they try to translate breakthroughs into commercial products.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe people get a lot of funding, but what’s after?\u201d Mr Chua said. \u201cIf I develop the technology to what it is, and I cannot commercialise it, then I think as a company we’ve failed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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LOWERING THE BARRIERS TO INNOVATION In an industry where global giants spend billions on facilities and talent, small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore\u2019s semiconductor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--2rQ_lGxk--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2024-04:reuters_1,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/one-cms\/core\/2026-08-28T052507Z_1_LYNXMPEM7R0AQ_RTROPTP_3_AMS-OSRAM-RESULTS.JPG?itok=RRDx--t3","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4035,4453,899,4787,24577,570,30746,22051,22],"class_list":["post-88523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-chip","tag-commits","tag-global","tag-industry","tag-intensifies","tag-race","tag-s500m","tag-semiconductor","tag-singapore","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/88524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}