Reflections from Nordic Chip Summit 2026: Building Europe’s semiconductor future together

A couple weeks ago it was time to bring together people from across the semiconductor industry and its surrounding fields, as the Nordic Chip Summit 2026 took place. This time, the event gathered 217 participants from 21 countries. With 26% of participants joining from outside Finland, the Summit showed the growin g value of bringing the Finnish, Nordic and European semiconductor communities closer together.

The numbers only tell part of the story. What stood out was the people – the audience consisted of a collaboration-coded group of entrepreneurs, business leaders, researchers, investors, policymakers and ecosystem builders working on the technologies, companies and decisions shaping the future of the industry. They were not only there to talk about the future. They were there to build it together.

After 1.5 days of discussions, a few messages in particular stayed with us.

Salah Nasri, CEO & Co-Founder of International Semiconductor Industry Group (ISIG) talked about how the semiconductor landscape is changing quickly, and strengthening resilience, energy strategy and technological capability is becoming increasingly important.

AI is reshaping the semiconductor opportunity

Paul de Bot, former President of TSMC Europe shared his perspective on the changing global semiconductor market and the opportunities this creates for Europe.

The enormous growth of AI is changing the semiconductor market. Data centres require increasingly powerful computing infrastructure, while new applications are creating demand for performance, energy efficiency and new approaches to computing.

Paul de Bot, former President of TSMC Europe, highlighted the growth expected in leading-edge technologies and data centres. For Europe, this raises an important question: where should we focus our efforts as the market develops?

One message from the Summit was that Europe needs to build its own capabilities in cloud and AI chips to stay relevant. Instead of trying to build every part of the value chain at once, we need to look at chip design, new architectures and the value created around them. By doing this, the demand for manufacturing is also more likely to follow, according to Paul de Bot.

Marika Mentula, VP Network Infrastructure Sales at Nokia, presenting how the AI Gigafactory is enabling high-end chip development.

The AI boom is also creating new opportunities for photonics. As computing power and data volumes increase, optical technologies are becoming increasingly important in AI infrastructure. One estimate presented at the Summit suggested that the share of photonics in AI racks could rise to approximately 35% by 2030, highlighting how closely the future of AI hardware is tied to advances beyond the computing chips themselves.

For European companies, this changing landscape creates room to do things differently and to build on areas where Europe already has strong technological expertise.

Europe needs ambition and willingness to take risks

What was agreed across multiple presentations, was that no technology alone will create the next generation of European semiconductor companies.

The Funding Myth-Busters discussion tackled a familiar challenge in deep tech: how do we finance ambitious companies that require significant capital, long development cycles and a willingness to take technological risk?

Europe needs entrepreneurs who think big and investors willing to share that ambition. We need companies that aim for international markets from the beginning and have the courage to tackle difficult technological problems.

At the same time, we cannot solve everything at once. As Jussi Tuovinen, the Summit chair and CEO of Kvanttinova, stated in his concluding notes, you have to tackle the problem one step at a time – or eat the elephants in the rooms piece by piece.

he talks were very interesting, and the audience listened intently to the speakers.

Stronger ecosystems need stronger connections

The day was filled with new encounters and networking.

Perhaps the clearest message of Nordic Chip Summit 2026 was that no country, company or ecosystem can build the thriving semiconductor industry alone.

Europe already has excellent research, established technology companies, specialised manufacturing capabilities, ambitious startups and strong regional ecosystems. The challenge is connecting these capabilities more effectively.

The Excellence in Ecosystems session brought together perspectives from Finland and other European technology ecosystems. It highlighted an important point: every region does not need to have everything. Instead, we need to understand our strengths and connect them with complementary expertise elsewhere.

This is particularly relevant for Finland. Our semiconductor ecosystem is part of a much bigger European picture. Stronger connections between companies, research organisations, competence centres and ecosystems help Finnish expertise reach international networks and, equally, bring European opportunities closer to Finnish companies.

Lively conversation and networking filled the breaks during the event.

Room filled with the people building the future

One of the most encouraging things about Nordic Chip Summit was the mix of people who joined us. Researchers, companies, entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and ecosystem organisations came from different countries and backgrounds, but many were working towards the same goal: turning good research and technological expertise into business, products and growth.

Many people from different cities and countries attended the event.

There was also a practical tone to the discussions. Europe has plenty of expertise, but making the most of it requires people who are willing to build companies, invest in new technologies, develop solutions and work across organisational and national borders.

This is where the Finnish Chips Competence Centre also has a role to play. We help companies find the expertise, infrastructure, funding opportunities and networks they need in Finland and across Europe. Nordic Chip Summit was one opportunity to bring these different parts of the ecosystem together and, hopefully, start some new conversations and collaborations along the way.

Thank you to everyone who joined Nordic Chip Summit 2026, shared their views and contributed to the discussions.

Jussi Tuovinen

The Summit chair

CEO of Kvanttinova Ltd