Europe just tripled its bet on chips. The new ask from Brussels is €120 billion in combined public and private money by 2035 - up from the €43 billion the original Chips Act called for in 2023. That's the pitch behind the so-called Chips Act 2.0.
Companies have already announced over €80 billion in chip projects across the bloc since the first Chips Act passed, with Intel leading the spending through new fabs in Ireland (after pulling out of Magdeburg, Germany in 2025).
A separate joint venture in Germany called ESMC - involving TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP - is worth more than €10 billion on its own, making it one of the largest semiconductor commitments ever made on European soil.
Even so, Europe is still only producing somewhere between 8 and 10% of the world's chips, while the bloc's target is 20% by 2030. To get there, the European Commission says it needs €120 billion in combined investment over the next decade.
The Commission is also planning to give itself direct cross-border investment authority - a structural change that signals Brussels knows the current setup isn't working.
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The pandemic-era chip shortage shut down car factories and stalled consumer electronics for months. That hit Europe hard because the bloc still relies on outside suppliers for the most advanced chips.
The US passed its own CHIPS Act in 2022 with tens of billions in subsidies, while China has poured even more into building domestic supply. Europe is now playing catch-up on a problem it was warned about years ago.
The new €120 billion target reflects the real math of building leading-edge chip plants. A single advanced fab can cost upwards of €10 billion, and Europe needs many of them just to move the needle on global market share.
Bosch, Infineon, and NXP are major players in automotive and industrial chips - the categories where Europe already has existing market strength.
The Commission's move to consolidate cross-border investment authority is the part to watch. Without it, every new fab needs national-level approvals and subsidies, which is part of why the first version of the Chips Act underdelivered.
Companies positioned to benefit if this actually passes include ASML, Infineon, and NXP - all European, all already deep in the supply chain. ASML, the Dutch firm that makes the extreme ultraviolet machines used to print the most advanced chips, is the bloc's biggest single point of leverage in the global supply chain.
The build-out tends to flow to construction firms and specialty chemical suppliers years before any chip rolls out of a new plant.
Whether €120 billion turns into actual fabrication capacity is the only question that matters next.
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