AMSTERDAM, May 27 (Reuters) - Taiwan Semiconductor

Manufacturing Co ( TSM ), the world's largest contract

chipmaker, said on Tuesday it will open a design centre in

Munich, Germany, which could at a later date help develop chips

via leading manufacturing processes for applications such as

artificial intelligence.

President of TSMC Europe, Paul de Bot, said at the company's

2025 Technology Symposium event that the Munich Design Centre

would open during the third quarter of 2025.

"It's intended to support European customers in designing

high-density, high-performance, and energy-efficient chips with

a focus on applications again in automotive, industrial, AI, and

IoT," de Bot said.

Europe is currently formulating a strategy to catch up with

the U.S. and China on artificial intelligence.

TSMC is building together with Infineon, NXP

and Robert Bosch a new 10 billion euro ($11.33 billion)

microchip manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany, through a

joint venture called European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co

(ESMC).

When asked if ESMC or the design center could assist in

meeting Europe's AI chips ambitions at a later stage, executive

Kevin Zhang said TSMC has engaged conversations with its

partners.

"I'm all for building up the most semiconductor capability

in Europe for AI applications... This design center obviously

potentially can be leveraged to bring the leading node support,"

Zhang said in a press briefing with journalists, referring to

advanced processes used to make AI chips, among others.

The Munich centre will work on all ESMC nodes, not

exclusively depending on the future customer base, he said.

TSMC joins its largest customer in the Bavarian capital,

Apple ( AAPL ), which has invested 2 billion euros to build its

largest engineering hub in Europe there.

Dresden-based ESMC aims to manufacture chips using smaller

manufacturing technology previously unavailable at European

chipmakers like Infineon, STMicroelectronics, or NXP.

"We have to be on the ground right here closer. We need to

have people here to really directly engage with customers,"

Zhang added.

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