The UK has launched the Semiconductor Catapult, a national capability designed to move semiconductor technologies from laboratory research toward commercial production, with facilities in Newport, Bristol and Glasgow.

The organisation will work with start-ups, SMEs and larger businesses, giving them access to specialist laboratories, equipment and engineering expertise across advanced packaging, power electronics, photonics, RF systems and quantum technologies. Companies can engage through commercial projects and collaborative research and development.

The initiative targets a structural weakness in the UK sector: the gap between research output and commercialisation. By letting businesses tackle complex technical challenges earlier in development, the Catapult aims to reduce the risks involved in validating new technologies and moving toward scale-up.

A phased build-out

The Catapult's first phase will establish core silicon and integration capabilities, giving customers the means to validate architectures and reduce risk during early development. The second phase will demonstrate more mature system-level integration and develop clearer routes toward scale-up and small-volume production.

That sequencing matters for UK supply chains. The Catapult will support work across both silicon and compound semiconductor supply chains, providing capabilities that cover complete products from design through to validation — including design, development, integration, advanced packaging, testing and validation.

Four technology pillars

The Catapult concentrates on four technology areas:

• Advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration, supporting chiplet and system-in-package architectures that address the scaling limitations of conventional semiconductor approaches.
• Power electronics and thermal management, focused on technologies needed for high-density AI hardware and next-generation infrastructure.
• Photonics and optical interconnects, targeting data infrastructure and emerging applications including silicon photonics, quantum photonics and sensing.
• RF and mixed-signal integration, supporting next-generation radio frequency technologies for beamforming applications and analogue integration.

Together these disciplines give the organisation an engineering base spanning RF and microwave, photonics, power electronics, advanced packaging and quantum technologies.

Commercial and strategic rationale

Caroline O'Brien, Chief Executive Officer of the Semiconductor Catapult, framed the launch in strategic terms.

"Semiconductors are the critical infrastructure behind AI hardware, defence, energy and communications," O'Brien said. "The decisions made today will determine where the technologies, companies and economic value behind those markets are created."

She pointed to the pace of opportunity in two markets in particular. "The market opportunity for the UK in AI hardware and defence is moving quickly," she said. "The Semiconductor Catapult ensures more of the technologies, supply chains and economic benefits created by semiconductor innovation are developed and retained in the UK."

The organisation also has an explicit anchoring function. According to O'Brien, it strengthens and builds new UK supply chains and supports start-ups, SMEs and large companies "so they can be anchored long-term in the UK."

For companies, the proposition is risk reduction. Access to specialist engineering teams, laboratories and equipment lets them test new technologies, validate designs and address technical challenges before committing to later, more capital-intensive stages of development.

"By bringing together multidisciplinary expertise, specialist facilities and system-level integration capability, the Semiconductor Catapult will help companies reduce risk and accelerate their route to market," O'Brien said. "We bridge gaps in device innovation, test, validation and scale-up, particularly in heterogeneous design, photonics integration and in RF, serving the AI hardware and defence markets."

Context

Semiconductors underpin many advanced technologies, making the ability to design, integrate, test and manufacture them an important component of UK industrial capability. Stronger domestic supply chains give companies greater access to the specialist expertise and infrastructure needed to turn research into commercial products. The Catapult's model consolidates these capabilities in one place, so businesses can work across different development stages rather than accessing them separately.

The facilities in Newport, Bristol and Glasgow will serve companies across the UK, from early-stage businesses developing new technologies to larger organisations working on complex semiconductor applications.

Looking ahead, the two-phase roadmap positions the Catapult to close the gap between UK R&D expertise and manufacturing capability — with the second phase's demonstration of system-level integration and small-volume production routes likely to determine whether it becomes a genuine on-ramp to scale for UK chip developers.