japans industry ministry is finalising a plan to provide statebacked chip maker rapidus an additional 300 billion yen 227 billion in funding to build a semiconductor plant in the northern island of hokkaido a local paper reported on saturday rapidus which in february picked chitose near sapporo as the site for a cuttingedge twonanometre chip factory previously secured an initial 70 billion yen funding from the government the additional grant will be used to help rapidus build a prototype line scheduled to launch in 2025 the hokkaido shimbun paper said citing multiple unidentified sources rapidus chair tetsuro higashi told reuters in february that it would need about 7 trillion yen of mostly taxpayer money to begin massproducing advanced logic chips in around 2027 with support from american chip giant ibm corp the japanese government is also offering up to 476 billion yen in subsidies to a taiwan semiconductor manufacturing co tsmc plant in kyushu in which sony group corp and denso corp each have a minority stakefacebooktwitterlinkedinend of article10910131298799128