The United States’ strategy for chip hegemony is shifting from “capacity reshoring” to betting on next-generation technologies.
On July 29, the U.S. Department of Commerce signed letters of intent totaling up to $874 million with seven companies. Unlike earlier subsidies that mainly focused on wafer fab construction, this funding is not concentrated on expanding advanced-process capacity. Instead, it adopts a venture-capital (VC) approach, taking equity stakes in seven disruptive technology companies and fully betting on seven foundational technology pathways for the “post-GPU era.”
Looking at the technical portfolios of these seven firms, this is by no means a routine industrial support measure. It is a “technological hunt” aimed at comprehensively deconstructing and reshaping the semiconductor industry’s axes—from materials and physical mechanisms to packaging and AI memory. The seven companies respectively cover CPO, ferroelectric memory, 3D packaging, low-loss dielectrics, thermodynamic computing, chip anti-counterfeiting, and novel optoelectronic substrates.
The companies that ultimately receive the funding must also provide the U.S. government with a minority, non-controlling equity stake. This means the U.S. government has thoroughly broken the appearance of non-interference in free markets and bound national will to capital.