SEMI president says SEA must build ecosystems, not just fabs, to capture trillion-dollar opportunity

Southeast Asia’s fixation on fab construction without ecosystem integration risks repeating early-2000s missteps—where gaps in equipment, materials, EDA, and talent left capacity idle. SEMI’s warning targets the core technical cascade: advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration now demand regional closure from IP design to test validation. U.S. CHIPS Act and EU Chips Act compliance frameworks are raising the bar for ‘trusted supply chains,’ exposing SEA players lacking local certification to surging export costs and client attrition. TSMC and Intel’s moves in Malaysia and Vietnam have already triggered Samsung’s accelerated Thailand assessment, narrowing the geopolitical arbitrage window. Within 18 months, the ability to establish cross-border standards alignment and shared R&D infrastructure will separate mere contract manufacturing outposts from genuine semiconductor hubs.