Malaysia unveils six homegrown chips in push beyond assembly lines

Malaysia has spent roughly half a century putting other people’s chips together. Now it wants its name on the blueprint.

On October 16, 2026, the country showcased six semiconductor chips at the Selangor AI & Semiconductor Summit. All six were developed by companies based in the Malaysia Semiconductor IC Design Park. They are part of a deliberate effort to shift from assembly and packaging toward chip design and intellectual property ownership.

The combined estimated sales potential is RM300 million (approximately $74 million) a year.

What Malaysia actually showed off

The six chips target a spread of applications: artificial intelligence, automotive technology, satellite systems and drone operations.

Three of the designs stood out.

SkyeChip’s MARS1000 is built for edge-AI applications. Edge AI means running artificial intelligence directly on a device, like a camera or a sensor, instead of shipping data off to a distant data center.

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SiliconX’s FPGA is being touted as Southeast Asia’s first homegrown version, tailored for industrial and automotive use. An FPGA, or field-programmable gate array, is a chip that can be reconfigured after it leaves the factory.

The plan behind the chips

The launch sits inside Malaysia’s broader National Semiconductor Strategy, aimed at taking decades of manufacturing know-how and using it as a springboard into higher-value work.

Malaysia’s government has set ambitious targets to support that shift. It aims to establish 110 high-value local semiconductor companies. It is also targeting the creation of between 300,000 and 500,000 tech-related jobs over the next few years.

A key piece of the strategy is a collaboration with Arm Ltd for access to intellectual property. Arm licenses chip architectures that other companies use as foundations for their own designs. The partnership is aimed at speeding up the design process.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Diego Almada Lopez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.