FermionIC Partners GlobalFoundries to Make India RF Chips

India Gets Its First Indian-Designed Chip Built by GlobalFoundries

FermionIC Design, a Bengaluru-based fabless semiconductor startup supported under India's Design Linked Incentive scheme, has signed a commercial manufacturing partnership with GlobalFoundries, the US-headquartered foundry that produces chips for global technology companies including Qualcomm, MediaTek and Broadcom. The partnership marks the first time an Indian fabless semiconductor company has engaged GlobalFoundries as a commercial foundry partner for production-grade chips, a milestone announced on June 11, 2026, and widely cited in India's semiconductor industry as a proof point for the DLI scheme's effectiveness in bringing Indian chip designs to manufacturing-ready status.

What FermionIC Makes

FermionIC develops high-performance radio frequency and millimeter-wave integrated circuits for radar systems, satellite communications, 5G telecom infrastructure, and related intelligent sensing applications. Its product roadmap includes phased-array beamformers, wideband transceivers, RF switches, high-linearity power amplifier chains, and integrated front-end modules optimized for adaptive communications, electronic intelligence, and AI-enabled RF sensing. The chips target both defence procurement customers including India's defence research organisations and commercial telecom infrastructure OEMs deploying 5G millimeter-wave base stations and satellite ground systems.

GlobalFoundries as a Technology Fit

GlobalFoundries is particularly well-positioned for RF and analog mixed-signal chips through its FDX (fully depleted silicon on insulator) and SiGe BiCMOS process platforms, which offer performance characteristics that make them attractive for RF front-end design at frequencies from sub-6 GHz through millimeter-wave bands above 60 GHz. FermionIC's choice of GlobalFoundries reflects both the process technology fit for RF applications and GlobalFoundries' commercial partnership model, which is accessible to startups at the production stage in a way that TSMC's order minimums sometimes are not.

DLI Scheme: From Design to Production

FermionIC's progression from DLI-scheme participant to commercial GlobalFoundries customer is one of the most concrete examples of the scheme achieving its intended purpose: providing Indian fabless startups with the financial support to design chips without immediately needing commercial revenue, and thereby enabling them to reach manufacturing-ready designs that can attract international foundry partnerships. The 23 tapeouts completed across DLI participants as of mid-2026 include FermionIC's RF chip designs, which have now progressed to commercial production status.

India's RF Chip Gap

India currently imports essentially all of its RF semiconductor content for both defence and commercial applications. AESA radar systems, electronic warfare modules, satellite ground terminals and 5G radio units all rely on RF chips sourced from US, European or Asian foundries, often with export restrictions or supply chain risks that create procurement complications for defence procurement. FermionIC's indigenously designed RF chips, manufactured at GlobalFoundries, represent a meaningful step toward reducing this dependency for at least a subset of RF applications.

Next Steps

FermionIC is now moving through GlobalFoundries' customer qualification process, with initial production runs expected to support customer evaluation samples for defence research organisations and early commercial telecom customers. A successful production launch would validate the company's technology claims with measured production silicon and position FermionIC to target larger defence and telecom procurement programs over the next two to three years.