Kalray SA

Kalray is a fabless semiconductor company, pioneer in processors for new intelligent systems.

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ID: 336735239719-29

Lobbying Activity

Response to Evaluation and Revision of the Chips Act ("Chips Act 2.0")

27 Nov 2025

Kalray welcomes the European Commissions initiative to revise the Chips Act. Adopted in September 2023 to address semiconductor shortages, the Chips Act must now evolve to reflect a transformed market, rapid technological shifts, and new geopolitical realities. While the ambition to secure a 20% EU market share by 2030 is both commendable and necessary, the current framework could better support the key players best positioned to realize it: fabless innovators like Kalray, which have been at the forefront of the AI chip domaina segment critical to meeting Europes targets. Our experience highlights some of the challenges in this endeavor. As an early and active contributor to policy discussions, we have engaged constructively with European and national decision-makers, yet we have encountered structural obstacles: Exclusion from the IPCEIs Sense Pilar on Microelectronics despite our strategic alignment, with limited transparency in the criteria underlying the selection decisions. A misalignment with the EIC, where our roadmap, focused on cutting-edge AI hardware, was not fully recognized as a 'priority' or 'strategic' initiative, which seems inconsistent with the EUs broader objectives. Ongoing hurdles in fundraising, as venture capital remains cautious about scaling deep-tech companies, and public funding has traditionally favored traditional fabs on mature nodes, which may not fully align with emerging market needs like AI. Complexities in the allocation process for EU funds, where navigating administrative requirements can sometimes overshadow core business priorities. These challenges reveal a significant gap between the Chips Acts ambitious goals and the practical support needed to achieve themespecially for the fabless and design ecosystems that are critical to Europes competitiveness in advanced semiconductor technologies. Yet, these innovatorswho will drive demand for cutting-edge nodes and then attract major manufacturers like TSMC, Intel, or Samsunghave received disproportionately little attention compared to traditional semiconductor factories. Europes capacity for advanced FinFET nodes (5nm and beyond) remains underdeveloped, and fostering their customer ecosystem is crucial to changing this dynamic. Fabless companies like Kalray, with their agile, innovation-driven models, represent one of Europes strongest assets for reducing dependencies, diversifying supply chains, and capturing high-growth opportunities. With enhanced support, they can fully contribute to Europes semiconductor sovereignty. This contribution aims to propose actionable recommendations to better integrate fabless ecosystems into a revised framework, ensuring the Chips Acts success. Recommendation 1: Formally recognize fabless companies as the cornerstone of a sovereign semiconductor ecosystem, with policies tailored to their distinct needs across the value chain. Recommendation 2: Provide targeted R&D supportthrough subsidies, tax incentives, or matched fundingto European fabless companies, particularly innovative SMEs, enabling them to develop sovereign design capabilities and secure a greater share of the value chain, in line with the Draghi reports recommendations. Recommendation 3 (inspired by the Draghi report and aligned with Eurostack): Establish procurement preferences for EU-produced chips in public data centers and HPC infrastructures, ensuring that public investments translate into sustainable market opportunities for European companies and reinforce the continents strategic autonomy in AI hardware. Recommendation 4: Launch an IPCEI dedicated to chiplet technologies, with a dual focus on: 1. Creating a European chiplet ecosystemincluding standardized interfaces, shared design tools, and a network of trusted assembly partnersto enable fabless companies to compete in global markets. 2. Tying public funding to measurable collaboration metrics, such as joint patents, shared roadmaps, or consortia-based projects

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Meeting with Xavier Coget (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen)

7 Mar 2025 · Kalray activities and EU tech sovereignty and digital policy

Meeting with Hanna Anttilainen (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné), Ioan-Dragos Tudorache (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné)

17 Feb 2025 · Introduction of the company and discussion on the development of semiconductor technologies in Europe.

Meeting with Bart Groothuis (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

8 Sept 2022 · Chips Act

Response to European chips act package – Regulation

9 May 2022

Kalray’s views on the proposal for a European Chips Act Kalray thanks the European Commission for the opportunity to provide feedback on the European Chips Act package. Kalray welcomes the ambition of the Chips Act to bolster the Europe’s production and design capacities by addressing short and longer term issues in the supply of chips to the region and by attracting investments. As the Chips Act acknowledges, semiconductors are essential across industries, and will become even more so going forward. Boosting investment in existing and new semiconductors manufacturing facilities in Europe is very much needed considering the key role semiconductors play in our economy and society. It makes even more sense if there is a European ecosystem of innovators to make these fabs work for European technologies, as there is no production without upstream design work. It will thus be all the more important that the vision set in the Chips Act is translated into concrete actions in terms of investment to enable smaller European companies to scale up and bring sovereign innovative technologies to the market. SMEs and start-ups indeed make up the bedrock of Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem and are the most innovative actors within that ecosystem. In that perspective, it is essential that the investment opportunities that will stem from the Chips for Europe Initiative benefit to SMEs, whether they are private or listed on the stock exchange market or not, and to the whole value chain. When it comes to taking into account the whole value chain, Kalray very much supports the inclusion of design capacities for integrated semiconductor technologies as one of the five components of the Chips for Europe Initiative. Concerning funding for SMEs, Kalray calls on the Commission to ensure that a share of the pot budget under the Chips for Europe Initiative is earmarked for SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups. Just like the Recovery and Resilience Facility has set targets for climate and digital spending, the Chips for Europe Initiative could set a target for SMEs spending, i.e. a given minimum percentage of the funding to be allocated to SMEs. In addition, we welcome the announcement of a Chips Fund, which should help startups obtain easier access to fundraising and attract investors so that companies like Kalray expand and bring sovereign technologies to the market. We also welcome the provisions under the Chips Act to set up a coordination mechanism and create a European Semiconductor Board to better coordinate and anticipate supply chain disruptions. This is a necessary step to create a genuine European ecosystem that will better anticipate disruptions and shortages, offer unique technologies, and thereby help reduce Europe’s dependence on third countries. All in all, we believe it is critically important for SMEs and start-ups to be fully included in the Commission’s vision and strategy as they are vital to bolster Europe’s innovation, competitiveness and resilience in coming years. To achieve the Commission’s stated goal of Europe producing 20% of the world's microchips by 2030, it is essential that innovation-driven SMEs like Kalray which invest heavily in the design of new generation of solutions specialized in Intelligent Data Processing from Cloud to Edge (i.e. the next generation of chips) can fully access private and public funding opportunities that will stem from the Chips Act. Investing strategically into SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups - beyond large players - is the only way forward to achieve Europe’s digital and technological sovereignty and rebalance the global semiconductor value chain in the next decade.

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Meeting with Alina-Stefania Ujupan (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager), Pierre-Arnaud Proux (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager)

14 Feb 2022 · EU Chips Act

Meeting with Roberto Viola (Director-General Communications Networks, Content and Technology) and Robert Bosch GmbH and

10 Jan 2022 · Semiconductors

Meeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and

10 Jan 2022 · CEO Round Table on Semiconductors