Canon is going to order 2nm test chips designed by Synopsys to be fabbed at Rapidus’ Chitose site.
Last month the company announced that it had raised $1.7bn from 32 private-sector companies (including Canon), with $634m of that coming from the government.
Rapidus projects that it will need over $44.4bn by fiscal year 2031, with about $19bn expected to come from the government.
Rapidus intends to start volume production next year. It is developing CPUs in partnership with Tenstorrent and Fujitsu has talked about using it to make 1.4nm CPUs in 2029.
Preferred Networks of Tokyo is developing AI chips and is considering whether to use Rapidus to make them.
