Sept 29 (Reuters) - Belgian chip research hub imec will

appoint Patrick Vandenameele as its new chief executive with

current CEO Luc Van den hove becoming chairman, the company told

Reuters on Monday.

Belgium's imec, one of the world's top semiconductor R&D

firms, has made the change to help it adapt to the changing

demands of artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaking, Vandenameele

said in an interview.

The rising influence of AI is reshaping the company's

priorities as it seeks to deepen its ties with cloud computing

providers.

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) , Microsoft ( MSFT ) , Meta (META.O),

and Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), known as hyperscalers, control

about half of the world's data-center capacity and are rapidly

expanding their market share as AI build-outs surges.

This AI boom has created demand for new, more efficient

chips to fill their multibillion-dollar data centres.

"They are screaming for solutions to scale up, scale out,

and to do this at a sustainable power balance. Power is the key

problem in this case," Vandenameele said.

Belgium's imec matches the most advanced and expensive tools

of makers like ASML and Applied Materials ( AMAT ),

with chipmakers and designers like TSMC, Nvidia ( NVDA )

, Apple ( AAPL ) and Google.

VENTURE & CHIPS ACT

Vandenameele, 52, began his career at imec in the 1990s,

co-founding four startups-three based on imec technology before

taking on senior leadership roles at firms like Qorvo ( QRVO ),

and Huawei.

Under his leadership, the company plans to launch more

spin-offs based on its technology. It will give start-ups

earlier access to its chipmaking lines and help European deep

tech firms overcome its funding and manufacturing hurdles, he

said.

"The barrier for these small companies to get access to

leading-edge technology is usually very high because they need

to compete with huge companies to get access to these fabs",

Vandenameele said.

The Belgium-based lab is building a sub-2 nanometer chip

pilot line, using funding of 2.5 billion euros ($2.9 billion)

from the European Union's act, to give European tech firms

access to manufacturing technology that would otherwise be

economically unattainable.

The research organisation is closely associated with top

lithography equipment maker ASML, which was founded

the same year across the nearby Dutch border, in Veldhoven.

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