UK launches Semiconductor Catapult with labs in three cities

The UK has a new national semiconductor body. The Semiconductor Catapult launched on 29 September, promising companies access to UK supply-chain integration, design, system test and validation under one roof rather than through a chain of separate contractors.

It runs from labs in Newport, Bristol and Glasgow, and its own description of the asset is blunt: it calls itself the only place in the UK, and one of the few in Europe, where teams working on RF and microwave, photonics, power electronics, advanced packaging and quantum sit together with design, integration and test capability.

Four sectors, in order

The Catapult has named four market priorities. Advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration covers chiplets and system-in-package work aimed at the scaling limits that now dominate chip design. Power electronics and thermal management is there for high-density AI hardware and the infrastructure around it. Photonics and optical interconnects takes in silicon and quantum photonics plus sensing, and RF and mixed-signal integration is aimed at beamforming and analogue work.

Two phases before scale-up

The plan runs in two stages. The first builds integration-ready capability and core silicon capability so customers can validate architectures early and find problems before committing to a design. The second is meant to demonstrate system-level integration and lay out routes to scale-up and small-volume production.

Caroline O'Brien, the Catapult's chief executive, framed it as a question of where value ends up: “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.” She added that semiconductors are “the critical infrastructure behind AI hardware, defence, energy and communications” and that “the decisions made today will determine where the technologies, companies and economic value behind those markets are created.”

The organisation is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales under company number 10255214, with its centre at Imperial Park in Newport.

Our opinion

Britain has spent years buying chip design talent and shipping the manufacturing elsewhere, so the useful part of this announcement is not the launch itself but the test and packaging equipment behind it. Advanced packaging is where costs and delays now concentrate, and a national facility that lets a start-up validate a chiplet design without ordering a full production run removes a real barrier. The risk sits in phase two. Every catapult promises to bridge the gap to volume manufacturing, and the ones that matter are judged on whether companies actually anchor their production in the country once the public funding stops covering the early risk.