canary islands tech boom semiconductors

Canary Islands tech boom: A global force in semiconductors

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

Canary Islands tech talent finally gets its moment in the sun

The emergence of the Canary Islands’ technological and innovative ecosystem was a bet as safe as it was long in coming. So much so that it even comes as a surprise that the undeniable talent concentrated in the islands’ two public universities is now being recognised in international media; it would have been legitimate to write it off. But it has just happened in Newelectronics, a British portal that is a benchmark in electronics and chips (semiconductors). The publication, from this week, describes the leading role Spain is gaining in this field and cites Catalonia and the Canary Islands as the pioneering regions.

The aforementioned specialised media outlet attributes Spain’s positioning to “a combination of regional specialisation, research excellence and industrial collaboration”, a scheme that Canarian public and private stakeholders confirm as the formula that has allowed the islands to take off. They add the alignment of all of them in pursuit of economic diversification, talent retention and the building of a successful future in this field. All of this is seasoned with the ingredient of the Special Canary Zone (ZEC), consolidated by the Economic and Fiscal Regime (REF), which allows companies to pay just 4% corporate tax.

Tax incentives alone won’t win the battle

“We have been to places like San Francisco or Germany,” cites its president, Pablo Hernández, as examples of fishing grounds where the ZEC has gone fishing. Without diminishing the seductive power of the tax incentive, both Hernández himself and businesspeople and teachers in the sector affirm that on its own it is not enough to win a battle for funding that is being fought across the entire map of the world. However, mixed with the “brutal talent”, in the words of the ZEC president, that exists in the region, the appeal becomes irresistible for investors.

There have already been cases where foreign capital has tried to enter like a bull in a china shop, demanding the relocation of a company born in the islands to a node with greater prominence. However, the abundance of technological knowledge has made them think again. Why set up in Madrid or Barcelona and compete with large corporations to secure the services of the brightest graduates when they have them here all to themselves?

Half a century in the making: the roots of excellence

It is no coincidence that the Canary Islands boasts a very high academic level in these fields of knowledge. Quite the contrary, it is a matter cooked on a very low heat for almost half a century. Because it was in 1978 when the Las Palmas University College (CULP) – a precursor to the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) – decided to create a laboratory of Applied Robotics, at the helm of which were placed the late Roberto Moreno and Octavio Santana.

“I was in charge of the electronics,” says Antonio Núñez, emeritus professor at ULPGC, who completes that trio for history. One of their first decisions was to buy several boards containing microprocessors; “among the first that existed,” he says. Also a gold medal holder at ULPGC, Núñez’s account becomes essential reading to understand why generations of great experts forged at the Canarian universities always ended up boarding a plane and founding their life projects wherever the fruit obtained in the laboratory was taken to market.

One of the biggest problems the archipelago has faced in recent years has precisely been losing, in favour of others, talent whose creation has been devoted no small amount of resources. Plugging that wound is one of the objectives set at its inception – in 2015 – by the Canarian Association of Startups, Tech-Based Companies and Angel Investors (Emerge). “Of course we thought that an ecosystem could be generated here that would deserve the attention of the international scene,” says the organisation’s current manager, Braulio Quintana. And if the ecosystem grows, so do the opportunities to create jobs and put the results of research at the service of the islands’ society and economy.

The forecasts of Emerge’s promoters, led by former manager Moisés Santana, came true. “We have always had the conviction that first-rate science is being generated in the Canary Islands and that it should be brought closer to industry to access the market,” explains Quintana. He and his team are tasked with “detecting it and accompanying it” to prevent it from running aground during the process.

From prize money to patents: the Tenet LightKey story

Tenet Light Key is a spin-off whose launch has the approval of the University of La Laguna (ULL). Its creator is the professor of Applied Physics, Jorge Méndez, who knows first-hand the importance of Emerge’s work. The driving force behind the Blas Cabrera Canary Islands Innovation and Technology Award, the association insisted that Méndez enter the competition, which he ultimately won with his Tenet LightKey. “If it hadn’t been for the €30,000 prize money, we wouldn’t be talking now,” says Méndez. That statement confirms that the danger of a brain drain remains very active. “You have to support,” insists Méndez, “because this cannot be just vocational and meritorious.” To put it in his own words: “You can’t be scraping by until you’re 30.” What’s more, if the researcher and their ideas are worth it, there will always be an investor with a good offer in hand to take both away.

Tenet LightKey has already attracted the attention of the Bank of Spain, whose cash R&D department has been collaborating with Jorge Méndez’s team – Pablo Acosta (PhD) and Miguel Medina (PhD student) co-sign the patent with him – for four years. They have generated luminescent materials designed to prevent counterfeiting, but beyond the security inks currently found on banknotes, passports or other documents, it adds a kind of barcode that banishes any possibility of fraud. The luxury textile sector or “wine bottles”, warns Méndez, are other recipients of these substances that are born from knowledge in photonics and nanotechnology, use rare earths and have become a reality after “25 years of basic research”. A timeline that once again highlights the need for constant support if the flourishing of a knowledge industry is intended.

Boutique manufacturing: the Canarian niche in semiconductors

Always in fabless mode, because a factory capable of housing the production lines needed to meet demand requires “half a million square metres and large quantities of litres of water,” notes Pablo Hernández. The Canary Islands has neither industrial land of those dimensions nor sufficient resources. However, there are also those who are preparing to twist this reality as far as possible.

If Antonio Núñez is part of the group of pioneers who set the knowledge machine in motion, José Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of Wooptix, is a key protagonist in the leap to the market. This company was the first spin-off from the ULL and “one of the best examples, if not the best, of a company born from a paper linked to astrophysics – Rodríguez holds a doctorate in this science – and has managed to attract international investment from the Canary Islands,” says Braulio Quintana. Rodríguez Ramos does not hide it and affirms that he created Wooptix “to turn it into a flagship project and generate a Canarian ecosystem”. In short, to demonstrate to those who came after that it is possible to become big here without having to move elsewhere. He has a project in hand to install a factory in the free zone of the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Few machines, but very expensive ones, is the concept that makes it possible to achieve that milestone.

The CEO of Wooptix maintains that the archipelago can go in this field “as far as it wants, just like Taiwan or Singapore”, because it has “all the conditions” to do so. Always provided that “the Canarian, Spanish and European politicians” allow it, from whom, “more than help”, Rodríguez requests “that they do not interrupt the natural growth of Wooptix and the ecosystem it can generate around it”.

A decade of innovation and a wake-up call for Europe

This company has recently celebrated its first ten years of existence. An exciting decade marked by successes unthinkable only because of the lack of previous ones of the same size, not because of the quality of the R&D it works with; “first-rate,” says José Manuel Rodríguez. So much so that major international players from the tech world have attended the various funding rounds. Broadly speaking, Wooptix has generated solutions such as the one that shortens the silicon measurement process used for semiconductors.

Just at the time when the crisis generated by the lack of microchips – after the pandemic – even forced the shutdown of car factories in Germany. Europe has realised how necessary it is to regain sovereignty in the field of technology. “Suddenly the world became aware that having all production in China and Taiwan was a problem,” points out Antonio Núñez. The emeritus professor explains how “very liberal countries” have adopted “very socialist policies”, showering billions on large companies to protect themselves from future shortages that force them to pull the lever on their industries.

That context reserves a leading role for companies emerging in the islands in “boutique manufacturing”. That is how the former first director of the University Institute of Applied Microelectronics (IUMA) – Núñez – describes the “very specific matters that are overlooked” because they do not fit within the production scales of “large corporations”. For example, technological applications for medicine.

Funding, challenges and the road ahead

The Perte chip (Strategic Project for Economic Recovery and Transformation in Microelectronics and Semiconductors) launched by Spain with funds made available by Europe for post-pandemic economic recovery follows the scheme described by Antonio Núñez. It was endowed with more than €12 billion and the Canary Islands drew up a very specific path to access the largest possible sum. The approved strategy remained a plan, which somewhat dampened the enthusiasm with which the initiative was launched. “The Next Generation funds are now running out,” laments Núñez, but he keeps the door of hope open because the SETT (Spanish Society for Technological Transformation) has been consolidated within the Ministry for Digital Transformation, which has “roughly the same budget for deep tech”.

In any case, the appearance of extra funding brings success closer, but Wooptix already existed before, as did Aerolaser, now partly owned by Red Eléctrica (REE) and winner of the national award for SME of the year. Another high-value-added company that has designed technology capable of even anticipating vegetation growth to avoid interference with power transmission networks. And there are many more: Celestia Chip, designer of the circuits of the future; or SubSea Mechatronics, essential for work with robots and sensors in extreme marine conditions, to name just two examples. “This has only just begun, we know there is a lot of high-value knowledge in the public universities and we are here to ensure it doesn’t remain a paper or a patent,” warns Quintana.

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