Japan's Rapidus Secures Funding for 2nm Chips

This latest funding is part of a larger Japanese strategy to regain a leading position in the semiconductor industry, a title the nation lost in the 1990s after dominating in the 1980s. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) is driving this national project, aiming to make Japan both strategically essential and independent amidst US-China technological competition. The government has committed to investing a significant 0.71% of its GDP into the sector between 2022 and 2025. The private-sector backing for Rapidus comes from a consortium of 32 companies, including tech giants and automotive leaders like Sony, Toyota, SoftBank, Canon, and Fujitsu. This broad support signals strong domestic corporate interest in re-establishing advanced manufacturing capabilities. To protect this national interest, the government will hold a "golden share" in Rapidus, giving it veto power over major corporate decisions. Formed in 2022, Rapidus is collaborating with IBM and the Belgian research organization Imec to leverage their 2nm process technology. The goal is to compete with industry leaders TSMC and Samsung, both of which began their own 2nm volume production in late 2025. While ambitious, Rapidus aims to differentiate by offering faster turnaround times and focusing on specialized AI chips rather than competing directly with TSMC on all fronts. The technical hurdles for 2nm production are immense, involving Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture and costly Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines to manage quantum effects and heat dissipation at such a small scale. Rapidus Chairman Tetsuro Higashi acknowledges significant challenges in achieving mass production, securing a customer base, and managing the estimated JPY5 trillion (approx. US$32 billion) required to reach full-scale manufacturing. For sales organizations in the deep-tech hardware space, the long development and production timelines for technologies like 2nm chips mirror their own lengthy sales cycles. Enterprise hardware deals often take months or even years, involving multiple stakeholders from executive, finance, and IT departments. This requires a sales process focused on building consensus among a buying committee and articulating a unique value proposition that connects directly to what each stakeholder values. Effective sales operations in this environment move beyond basic CRM management to become a strategic function. Best practices include creating a unified tech stack to eliminate data silos, standardizing the sales process with clear exit criteria for each stage, and implementing robust forecasting methodologies. Revenue Operations (RevOps) aligns sales, marketing, and customer success to treat the entire customer lifecycle as a single system, which is critical for managing high-ACV deals. Key metrics for sales ops leaders in this sector go beyond quota attainment to include sales cycle length, pipeline velocity, and forecast accuracy. Dashboards should visualize leading indicators of deal health, such as "time in stage," to identify and address bottlenecks early. For complex hardware sales, tracking metrics like design win rates and customer acquisition cost provides a more holistic view of sales effectiveness than revenue alone. The ultimate goal for a sales ops function supporting a company like Tenstorrent is to create a repeatable, data-driven sales motion. This involves automating workflows to reduce manual work for reps, providing clear visibility into the pipeline for accurate forecasting, and enabling strategic coaching based on performance data. By optimizing these internal processes, the sales team can more effectively navigate the complex, multi-stakeholder landscape inherent in selling advanced hardware.