The Greek semiconductor industry
A small-but-mighty force today. A sleeping giant in the waking tomorrow?
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🔳 The Greek semiconductor industry
Semiconductors are materials that control electrical currents. They are essential components of almost every modern electronic device in the world.
If you are reading this post on your phone, laptop, tablet, smartwatch, or even AR glasses, there is a very good chance some of the chip designs and software running on your device have been made in Greece.
What! You don’t believe me? Well, it’s true.
The Greek semiconductor industry might be small, but it has been a mighty force for at least 40 years.
Let’s have a look.
A trip down the Greek semiconductor memory lane
I am no historian, so please excuse any omissions. But I do have a hunch.
The story (probably) starts where you least expect it: Crete.
Crete has been a semiconductor pioneer since the 1980s.
The Microelectronics Research Group (MRG), a joint research effort of the Department of Physics at University of Crete and the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) at the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), was established around 1985-1986.
MRG harnessed incredible scientific talent and given rise to many important research experiments through the years. No wonder the University of Crete has remained a top engineering hub until today.
But it’s not just Crete. Patras has also been a leader since the early 2000s.
According to local lore, the real national “big bang” started with Atmel.
Despite the closure of Atmel’s semiconductor subsidiary in 2006 (one of the early hubs of foreign companies in Greece, employing up to 140 at its height), Patras remains a powerhouse to this very day. The critical mass that came together led to the creation of one of Greece’s most successful tech companies: Think Silicon.
Think Silicon built such a deep IP stack that they were eventually acquired by Applied Materials, a global leader in semiconductor technology, in 2020 for a sum in the €25-40M range. The subsidiary (still based in Patras) is now a leader in ultra-low power 2D and 3D GPU and display processors for MCU-based microprocessor cores in embedded systems.
And yet, this is not the only semiconductor company building amazing things in Patras. Dialog Semiconductor, a global semiconductor system designer and manufacturer, also chose to build its most important R&D hub in the city.
Thanks in no small part to the innovations produced at the Patras facility, Dialog Semiconductor was bought in 2021 by Japanese Renesas Electronics for $5.9B.
Of course, Athens could not be missing from the party. It boasts its own very impressive semiconductor success story, Helic.
Helic is a premier provider of software that analyzes and mitigates the risk of electromagnetic crosstalk for semiconductor designs. Based out of Halandri, the company was acquired by US multinational Ansys in 2019 for about $62M. Ansys is now being acquired by giant Synopsis for $35B.
Athens is also home to the reputable Institute of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology (INN) at Demokritos. INN hosts a number of semiconductor-related labs and activities. (It is also hiring for a bunch of research positions.)
Semiconductor companies operating in Greece
According to the latest review by the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Greece boasts a dynamic ecosystem of over 25+ semiconductor companies. That’s pretty wild.
The Hellenic Emerging Technologies Industry Association (HETiA) — formerly known as the Hellenic Semiconductor Industry Association (HSIA) — has been operating as an ecosystem connector and amplifier for this growing community.
Here are some of the most relevant semiconductor-related companies operating in Greece today that I have been able to identify:
Ansys (after acquiring Helic)
Applied Materials (after acquiring Think Silicon)
Renesas Electronics (after acquiring Dialog Semi)
Zepp (through its subsidiary Whale Micro)
There are many more companies in Greece that are part of the broader community of emerging technologies. Some of them are operating as R&D branches of large multinationals. Others are scrappy startups that are gradually attracting more attention.
What matters is that the density of semiconductor talent in Greece (often supported or advised by great Greek scientists in the US) is top notch. Crete, Patras and Athens, but also Thessaloniki, have the potential to turn the country into a much more important player in the global chip race over the next decade.
What now for Greece?
The initiatives and proposed funding stemming from the European Chips Act offer a great opportunity for Greece to build a stronger semiconductor industry.
A group of nine countries (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands) have already come together to form the “Semiconductor Coalition”. The purpose of this group is to work closely with the European Commission, as well as together, to improve cooperation over semiconductors and attempt to narrow the gap with the US and Asia.
HETiA is helping make moves. The most important one in my view has been its advocacy for the closer collaboration of all leading Greek research institutions and its proposal to create a Hellenic Chips Competence Centre (HCCC). These are all important steps, especially because they are led from market participants in the local industry.
The Greek semiconductor industry is a small-but-mighty force today. It’s up to us if we can turn this into a sleeping giant that can some day wake up.
🏭 Economy & Business
BoG predicts economy to grow at 2.3%, KEPE suggests 2.2%
Greece's National Recovery and Resilience Plan: latest state of play
Turnover in industry down 9.1% YoY in April 2025
Minor tax changes (of questionable benefit) introduced by the govt
New non-dom tax incentives to attract (even more) UHNWI to Greece
Cumulative change in the CPI since 2012 has been very low in Greece
De Havilland Canada announced its expansion to Greece
Deutsche Bank’s world of prices for 2025 shows Greece is historically more of an average rather than a negative case (as many people often suggest)
🤖 Tech & Startups
Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) experiment taking place in Athens
Mysten Labs opened a SuiHub in downtown Athens
Vsltec raised a €0.5M pre-seed round from a Greek shipping crowd
DUTHSat-2, the first official Greek CubeSat, was launched in space
Greek Arduino developers are doing some pretty cool things
Nuclear and shipping should go hand in hand, argues Deon Policy Institute
National Observatory of Athens has a long and amazing history
Patras Science Park: a brief report on its activities and hosted companies
🙌 Celebrating Greek wins
Messolonghi by Locals studies, promotes and preserves the local cultural heritage and environment of historic Messolonghi municipality
NTUA ranks 1st in Greece and 355th globally (140th on Engineering & Tech) in latest QS World University Rankings for 2025 [we have a long way to go…!]
Leros remains a traditional island gem without many of the problems that has mass tourism is wrecking across the Aegean
Tella Thera in Crete is the most beautiful hotel I’ve seen in a very long time
📣 Greeks hiring: Coolest jobs out there
Investment Analyst / Associate @ Golden Age Capital, Athens
Associate / Investment Manager @ BigPi VC, Athens
Investment Platform Advisor @ EIB, Luxembourg
Head of Production @ Alicia Bots, Athens
Applied Scientist, AGI foundations @ Amazon, Boston
17 positions across entire stack @ SteerAI, Abu Dhabi
10+ roles in science, tech and BD @ Causaly, ATH/LDN/NYC
5 open roles in research & engineering @ KIOS, Nicosia
2 open tech roles @ Dataviva, Thessaloniki
Robotics & Automation summer internship @ NILT, Copenhagen
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Really? Now that's quite interesting indeed.
I always learn something new reading your articles