Samsung Invests $170M in Yokohama Chip Packaging Lab

Samsung Electronics is set to establish an advanced chip packaging research and development center in Yokohama, Japan, investing 25 billion yen (approximately $170 million). The move is expected to intensify competition with TSMC in the high-end chip packaging market.

The new R&D facility is scheduled to open in March 2027 and will strengthen Samsung's collaboration with Japanese semiconductor material and equipment innovators, as well as with the University of Tokyo. Samsung plans to recruit a significant number of researchers with master's and doctoral degrees from the university, conveniently located near the Yokohama site.

The city of Yokohama announced in December 2023 that it would support Samsung’s project with a 2.5 billion yen subsidy. Samsung has acquired the Leaf Minato Mirai building near the Yokohama port area for the facility, featuring 12 floors above ground and four below, with a total floor area of 47,710 square meters. The center will house both the research lab and a pilot production line.

Advanced packaging technology connects GPUs, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and other memory chips to function as a single unit. It is considered crucial for manufacturing AI chips, boosting performance without the extreme technical challenges of scaling down to the smallest nanometer nodes.

For Samsung, packaging is central to its ambitious turnkey chip manufacturing services, which integrate wafer fabrication and packaging—a domain where TSMC currently leads. TSMC also established a research lab at the University of Tokyo in 2019 to advance its packaging capabilities.

Japan hosts a wide range of key material and equipment developers that play critical roles in the packaging ecosystem, including leaders in bonding films, gold plating materials, cutting equipment, adhesives, and surface treatments.

According to Counterpoint Research, the advanced chip packaging market is projected to grow from $34.5 billion in 2023 to $80 billion by 2032. In the first quarter, Taiwan's ASE Technology ranked third with a 6.2% market share, following Intel at 6.5%. Samsung is currently the only Korean company offering turnkey manufacturing services, holding a 5.9% share of the packaging market. Its 2.5D and 3D advanced packaging capabilities still lag behind TSMC, but recent wins—such as Tesla's next-generation AI6 chip contract valued at $16.5 billion—highlight Samsung's growing strength in integrated turnkey services.