LONDON, U.K. — Yesterday (June 14), as the British and Japanese prime ministers met at 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the U.K. prime minister, to discuss a broad range of partnerships spanning energy, financial services, and technology, one outcome was the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Rapidus Corporation and the UK Semiconductor Centre (UKSC). The agreement will enable the U.K. semiconductor industry to access Rapidus’ 2-nm technology by the end of 2027.
In an exclusive video interview with EE Times, UKSC CEO Andy McLean explained the background to the UKSC and the significance of the new MoU with Rapidus.
You can watch the complete video interview here.
You can also listen to an audio-only version here:
View All In the interview, McLean said the collaboration was a direct response to the U.K. government’s AI Hardware Plan, announced last week, which identifies a vital need for domestic firms to access critical fabrication capabilities not native to the U.K. While the U.K. excels in design and compound semiconductor materials, it lacks the advanced, leading-edge CMOS manufacturing infrastructure required for next-generation computing. McLean said the partnership bridges that gap by enabling U.K. startups and established firms to gain direct access to Rapidus’ prototyping and mass-production pipelines for leading-edge 2-nm logic, which are expected to come online in the second half of 2027.
The UKSC highlighted in the official announcement today (June 15) that, as part of the MoU, it will act as a trusted and neutral facilitator, helping eligible U.K. companies engage with Rapidus while supporting broader collaboration between the U.K. and Japanese semiconductor ecosystems. The MoU builds on a partnership agreement signed by the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 2023, which signaled an ambition to collaborate more closely on semiconductor technologies.
In prepared remarks, the U.K.’s technology Minister Kanishka Narayan said, “Japan is one of our closest tech partners. This deal will offer our talented innovators driving the future of quantum computers, next-generation chips, and clean energy direct access to vital investment, manufacturing, and markets.”
Helping U.K. innovators to scale
Andy McLean was appointed CEO of UKSC last month, enticed back to the U.K. after more than 30 years in the U.S. working for companies such as Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, and National Semiconductor.
The UKSC was formed in June 2025 by the British Government as a national independent hub to accelerate growth and innovation in the industry. It was launched with about GBP £19 million (~$25.5 million) in funding as part of a broader industrial strategy that included a ‘Digital and Technologies Sector Plan,’ which detailed the need for the UKSC.
The UKSC’s mission is to bring together industry, academia, and government and to provide cross-sector leadership on semiconductor innovation, alongside ecosystem development and business services. It will also develop long-term R&D and infrastructure roadmaps to help guide future investment in the semiconductor sector.
The U.K. may have lost much of its semiconductor manufacturing capacity since the 1980s and now focuses very heavily on its compound semiconductor materials and manufacturing, which is largely based in Wales. What the country has retained, however, is a strong research and innovation base in semiconductors, photonics, and quantum technologies. That ecosystem has since been highly fragmented, and McLean explained that the UKSC will help catalyze the scaling up of the innovative base. He said that there are currently some 700 semiconductor startups in the U.K.
What the country lacks—he said in a presentation last Friday (June 12) at the Silicon Catalyst ChipStart UK event at Arm headquarters in Cambridge, U.K.—is the connection between semiconductor innovation and capital, and between semiconductor innovation and customers.
Hence, he sees both his role and that of the UKSC as serving as the ‘front door’, helping address these gaps by providing missing links, including access to advanced manufacturing as expected through the partnerships with Rapidus.
In the interview with EE Times, McClean explained that while the U.K. might be world-class at academic research and incubating early-stage innovation—particularly in cutting-edge fields such as silicon photonics, quantum computing, and compound semiconductors—it has historically struggled to scale and commercialize these technologies as efficiently as the U.S. The UKSC intends to bridge this gap by aligning domestic innovation directly with rapidly growing global markets, specifically targeting AI hardware, data centers, electric vehicles, and smart grids.
He said both the UKSC and its partnership with Rapidus will help the U.K. reduce the U.K.’s startup brain drain by providing better access to capital, customers, manufacturing capacity, and other parts of the global value chain that are not readily available domestically.
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