WS Investor
01 Oct 2026, 17:40
Applied Materials and Besi Expand AI Packaging Partnership
Applied Materials and BE Semiconductor Industries expanded their strategic partnership to accelerate development of next-generation advanced packaging technologies for AI systems.
Besi will join Applied Materials’ EPIC Center as an Innovation Partner, extending a collaboration that began in 2020 with the companies’ Hybrid Bonding Center of Excellence in Singapore. The broader partnership will focus on 3D IC scaling, logic and memory integration, and photonics technologies used in increasingly complex AI infrastructure.
The companies plan to expand beyond die-to-wafer hybrid bonding into new hybrid-bonding platforms, thermo-compression bonding, die-on-wafer, die-on-die and die-on-panel architectures. They will also work on photonics-enabled interconnect technologies supporting co-packaged optics and higher-bandwidth AI systems.
Applied Materials said the collaboration is intended to give semiconductor customers earlier access to co-optimized process and assembly technologies across the advanced packaging flow.
The work will take place partly at Applied’s new EPIC Center in Silicon Valley, where capital investment is expected to scale to approximately $5 billion as customer projects begin.
The expanded partnership reflects the growing importance of advanced packaging as AI chips require denser interconnects, higher memory bandwidth and more sophisticated integration between logic, memory and optical components.
Applied Materials and BE Semiconductor Industries expanded their strategic partnership to accelerate development of next-generation advanced packaging technologies for AI systems.
Besi will join Applied Materials’ EPIC Center as an Innovation Partner, extending a collaboration that began in 2020 with the companies’ Hybrid Bonding Center of Excellence in Singapore. The broader partnership will focus on 3D IC scaling, logic and memory integration, and photonics technologies used in increasingly complex AI infrastructure.
The companies plan to expand beyond die-to-wafer hybrid bonding into new hybrid-bonding platforms, thermo-compression bonding, die-on-wafer, die-on-die and die-on-panel architectures. They will also work on photonics-enabled interconnect technologies supporting co-packaged optics and higher-bandwidth AI systems.
Applied Materials said the collaboration is intended to give semiconductor customers earlier access to co-optimized process and assembly technologies across the advanced packaging flow.
The work will take place partly at Applied’s new EPIC Center in Silicon Valley, where capital investment is expected to scale to approximately $5 billion as customer projects begin.
The expanded partnership reflects the growing importance of advanced packaging as AI chips require denser interconnects, higher memory bandwidth and more sophisticated integration between logic, memory and optical components.
