Rapidus signed an MoU with the UK Semiconductor Centre (UKSC) for future semiconductor manufacturing, announced alongside a UK-Japan summit at Downing Street on June 14. The MoU establishes a framework for British chip designers to access Rapidus' 2nm GAA process at the IIM-1 facility in Chitose, Hokkaido. Rapidus confirmed first successful 2nm GAA transistor operation in July 2025 and is targeting mass production. The same week, Rapidus also signed a separate MoU with Fondazione Chips-IT in Italy.
The coordination cost being reduced here is geopolitical, not just logistical. UK chip design teams currently face a two-node gap: ARM-optimized designs that want 2nm either route through TSMC (where the allocation queue for new customers without existing relationships is 18-24 months) or Samsung (where 2nm yield data is thin). Rapidus' RUMS (Rapid and Unified Manufacturing Service) model is explicitly designed for shorter-run, faster-cycle tape-outs that align with how design startups and university spinouts actually operate. An MoU with the UKSC means UK teams get a queue position and a formal interface into that model before the fab is production-ready.
The skeptical read: MoUs are not contracts, and Rapidus has a history of signing framework agreements faster than the fab ramps. But the Italy MoU the next day suggests this is a deliberate outbound campaign to build a customer pipeline for 2nm access before TSMC N2 dominates the booking calendar. For UK designers who cannot get into TSMC's queue, Rapidus in 2027 is a real option for the first time. That changes the feasibility calculation on tape-outs that were previously shelved for foundry access reasons.