<p>➀ Rapidus, a Japanese wafer foundry startup, is building a 2nm wafer factory in Hokkaido with a target to start trial production in April 2025 and mass production in 2027;</p><p>➁ Rapidus CEO Koike Atsuyoshi stated that the factory construction is proceeding smoothly and trial production will begin on April 1st;</p><p>➂ Rapidus aims to achieve an estimated cumulative revenue of 18 trillion yen from mass production between 2027 and 2036;</><p>➃ TSMC is leading in the mass production of 2nm chips, but Rapidus has advantages in process speed, yield, and performance, and aims to catch up with TSMC;</p><p>➄ Rapidus, founded in August 2022, is a joint venture of eight Japanese companies, including Toyota, Sony, NTT, NEC, SoftBank, Denso, and Mitsubishi UFJ, with a target to mass produce 2nm processes by 2027;</p><p>➅ Rapidus plans to use robots and AI to create an automated 2nm production line in northern Japan, aiming to reduce delivery times by a factor of three compared to competitors;</p><p>➆ Rapidus has become the first company in Japan to receive EUV lithography machines, with the first batch of EUV lithography equipment arriving in Japan on December 14, 2024;</p><p>➇ Rapidus' fully automated factory gives it a competitive edge, as the back-end processes of chip manufacturing, such as interconnection, packaging, and testing, are labor-intensive;</p><p>➈ CEO Atsuyoshi Koike states that this will provide higher performance and faster delivery times for the same 2nm products compared to other companies.</p>