Rapidus Likely to Miss March 2028 Deadline for 2nm Chips

Rapidus has yet to produce a functioning SRAM cell, a milestone that needed to be completed by summer 2026 for the Japanese government-backed foundry to hit its March 2028 target for mass-producing 2-nanometer chips, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The company is weighing a one-year delay of 2nm output into fiscal 2028.

The missing piece is small and ordinary. Static random access memory sits on every modern processor, and without a working design at the new node there is nothing credible to tape out. Bloomberg's Takashi Mochizuki reported that Rapidus has "yet to produce functioning SRAM cells, a critical step that needed to be done by the summer to manufacture 2-nanometer chips in time," and that the foundry is "at least several months behind its March 2028 pledge to mass-produce 2nm chips."

In public, the company is not conceding the slip. Rapidus said it will "continue to do everything possible to meet the target of starting mass production in the latter half of fiscal 2027," per the report.

The stakes sit with Tokyo. Bloomberg notes the Japanese government is providing "more than 3 trillion yen in subsidies and equity investment to Rapidus through fiscal 2027" to try to rebuild a domestic advanced-logic industry. Digitimes corroborated the Bloomberg account on Wednesday. Of the 331 chip stories we have logged in the last 90 days, this is the first to call a Japanese state program's core timeline into open question.