Ten companies will participate including Toyota, Sony, Kioxia, NEC, NTT, Softbank and Denso with each company putting in $6.8 million.
Leading the establishment of Rapidus has been Tetsuro Higashi formerly CEO of Tokyo Electron.
Rapidus will be a vehicle for US-Japan co-operation in co-development of semiconductor technology.
The Japanese government has budgeted $2.5 billion for a Japan-U.S. research centre which is expected to be set up by the end of this year.
The centre is expected to collaborate with domestic and foreign companies and research institutions such as IBM and imec.
Rapidus is expected to work on setting up mass production capabilities.
Rapidus has been granted $500 million by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization – a national R&D agency
