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Infineon Technologies is to build a new factory for power semiconductors. The market and technology leader in this segment will thereby create the foundation for long-term, profitable growth. A fully automated chip factory for manufacturing 300-millimeter thin wafers will be constructed at the Villach location in Austria alongside the existing production facility. Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Dr. Reinhard Ploss, Chief Executive Officer of Infineon, and Dr. Sabine Herlitschka, Chief Executive Officer of Infineon Austria, presented the project in Vienna. Investments totaling around €1.6 billion are planned over six years. Some 400 new jobs, especially highly qualified ones, will be created by the new, highly efficient factory. Construction is scheduled to start in the first half of 2019 and production is expected to commence at the start of 2021. The additional sales potential of the new factory, given full capacity utilization, is put at around €1.8 billion a year.

An article written by Jonathan Shieber for Techcrunch - Vesper Technologies, a new microphone technology developer, has raised $23 million from some of the biggest names in audio technology to finance the commercialization of its piezoelectric microphones.

The market research & strategy consulting company, Yole Développement (Yole), part of Yole Group of Companies, has now been following the UV LED industry for 10 years by developing a strong expertise related to the technology evolution, the competitive landscape and market trends. In this decade Yole’s analysts identified and analyzed impressive breakthroughs, totally changing the UV LED landscape. This has allowed the technology to take more market share from other UV illumination technology. From representing 8% of the market in 2008, UV LEDs are expected to reach 25% in 2018.

According to Yole Développement (Yole), the global LiDAR systems’ market for automotive applications, is showing an impressive growth between 2017 and 2023. From US$726 million to US$5 billion, it should reach a huge 43% CAGR during this period. In addition, the growth should continue until 2032 with a US$ 28 billion market value, for the automotive market segment only. Today, LiDARs and new applications are developing simultaneously. Thus the LIDAR market is directly linked to the development of ADAS solutions and robotic vehicles. Both domains show high growth rates and tremendous enthusiasm.

Performance-driven applications like PCs and smartphones are giving way to functional applications that are helping mold the semiconductor industry’s future. In this context, advanced semiconductor packaging is seen as a way to increase a semiconductor product’s value by adding functionality, maintaining/increasing performance, and lowering cost – and to this end, the printed circuit board (PCB) is no longer just an interconnection, but also an integration solution. With substrate-like PCBs (SLP) appearing in Apple’s latest iPhones, PCB and substrate manufacturers have started producing SLP and investing in modified semi-additive processes (mSAP). More details are offered in Yole Développement’s recent report, Status of Advanced Substrates 2018: Embedded Dies & Interconnects, Substrate-like PCB Trends.

Vesper, developer of the world's most advanced piezoelectric sensors, today closed $23M in Series B funding, led by American Family Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on seed to growth stage rounds. Vesper also received investments from Accomplice, Amazon Alexa Fund, Baidu, Bose Ventures, Hyperplane, Sands Capital, Shure, Synaptics, ZZ Capital and other undisclosed investors. The round brings Vesper's total funding to date to $40M.