Indian firms cold to Tower Semiconductor's offer to set up chipmaking JV

In 2022, US chip giant Intel, which had signed a deal to buy out Tower for $5.4 billion, decided to cancel it and paid a $353 million termination fee

Israeli company Tower Semiconductor’s preliminary talks with several Indian companies for setting up a joint venture fab plant, involving the transfer of chip technology, have been tepid.

A top management team from Tower, led by CEO Russell C Ellwanger, was in India last week and met Minister of State for IT and Electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

A senior government official confirmed that Tower executives met four-five Indian companies “but we believe there is not much response to the proposal from these companies”. Sources said Reliance Industries and Jindal were among them. 

In 2010, Tower helped the government-owned Semi-Conductor Laboratory (SCL) make