Infineon Technologies AGisGermany's largest semiconductor manufacturer. The company was spun-off from Siemens AG in 1999.[4] Infineon has about 58,600 employees in 2023 and is one of the ten largest semiconductor manufacturers worldwide.[3][5] In 2023 the company achieved sales of €16.309 billion.[3][6]
Infineon markets semiconductors and systems for automotive, industrial, and multimarket sectors, as well as chip card and security products. Infineon has subsidiaries in the US in Milpitas, California, and in the Asia-Pacific region, in Singapore and Tokyo, Japan.
Infineon has a number of facilities in Europe, one in Dresden. Infineon's high power segment is in Warstein, Germany; Villach, Graz and Linz in Austria; Cegléd in Hungary; and Italy. It also runs R&D centers in France, Singapore, Romania, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine[7] and India, as well as fabrication units in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Hungary. There is also a Shared Service Center in Porto, Portugal.[8]
In 2010, board member Klaus Wucherer was elected to step into the chairman's office upon the retirement of the then-current chairman Max Dietrich Kley following a proxy contest in advance of the shareholders' meeting.[9]
In 2023, it was Germany's largest chip manufacturer.[10]
As of 2011, Infineon comprised four business areas after several restructurings:[11]
Infineon provides semiconductor products for use in powertrains (engine and transmission control), comfort electronics (e.g., steering, shock absorbers, air conditioning), as well as in safety systems (ABS, airbags, ESP). The product portfolio includes microcontrollers, power semiconductors and sensors. In the fiscal year 2018 (ending September), sales amounted to €3,284 million[12] for the ATV segment.
The industrial division of the company (named IPC until 2023 [13]) includes power semiconductors and modules which are used for generation, transmission and consumption of electrical energy. Its application areas include control of electric drives for industrial applications and household appliances, modules for renewable energy production, conversion and transmission. This segment achieved sales of €1,323 million in fiscal year 2018.[12]
The division Power & Sensor Systems sums up the business with semiconductor components for efficient power management or high-frequency applications. Those find application in lighting management systems and LED lighting, power supplies for servers, PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics, custom devices for peripheral devices, game consoles, applications in medical technology, high-frequency components having a protective function for communication and tuner systems and silicon MEMS microphones. In the fiscal year 2018, PSS generated €2,318 million.[12]
The CSS business provides microcontrollers for mobile phone SIM cards, payment cards, security chips and chips for passports, identity cards and other official documents. Infineon delivers a significant number of chips for the new German identity card.[14] CSS achieved €664 million in fiscal year 2018.[12] "Infineon is the number 1 in embedded security" (IHS, 2016 – IHS Embedded Digital Security Report).
Infineon bought the Taiwanese chip designer ADMtek in 2004.[15][16] In 2006, the former Memory Products division was carved out as Infineon's subsidiary Qimonda AG, of which Infineon last held a little over three-quarters. At its height Qimonda employed about 13,500 people; it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange until it filed for bankruptcy with the district court in Munich in January 2009.[17] When Infineon sold Wireline Communications in July 2009 to Golden Gate Capital for €250 million,[18] the resulting company was named Lantiq. With around 1,000 employees,[19] Lantiq was acquired by Intel for US$345 million in 2015.[20] Infineon's wireless business segment was sold to Intel in January 2011 for US$1.4 billion,[21] with the resulting new company named Intel Mobile Communications (IMC).[22][23] IMC had approximately 3,500 employees.[22][23] The smartphone modem business of IMC was acquired by Apple Inc. in 2019.[24]
In August 2014 Infineon Technologies agreed to buy the International Rectifier Corporation (IR) for about US$3 billion,[25] one third by cash and two-thirds by credit line.[26] The acquisition was officially closed on January 13, 2015.[27] In July 2016, Infineon agreed to buy the North Carolina-based company Wolfspeed from Cree Inc. for US$850 million in cash,[28] although the deal was ultimately stopped due to US security concerns.[28][29] In October 2016, Infineon acquired the company Innoluce, which has expertise in MEMS and LiDAR systems for use in autonomous cars. The MEMS lidar system can scan up to 5,000 data points a second with a range of 250 meters, with an expected unit cost of $250 in mass production.[30][31] Infineon Technologies AG sold its RF Power Business Unit in March 2018 to Cree Inc. for €345 million.[32] Infineon announced in June 2019 that it would acquire Cypress Semiconductors for US$9.4 billion.[33][34] The acquisition closed on 17 April[35] of 2020.[36]
In May 2023, Infineon acquired "tiny machine learning" company Imagimob, a Stockholm, Sweden based company with a platform for development and deployment of AI applications.[37] Infineon acquired GaN Systems, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, in October 2023.[38] Infineon in 2023 acted on an expansion plan by investing EUR 5 billion into its semiconductor fab in Kulim, Kedah, Malaysia.[39] As of 2023 Infineon was also planning to build two additional plants in Dresden for €5 billion, asking the government to subsidize it with €1 billion, financed through the €4 billion European Chips Act. It would employ 3000 people.[10]
In 2004–2005, an investigation was carried out into a DRAM price fixing conspiracy during 1999–2002 that damaged competition and raised PC prices. As a result, Samsung paid a $300 million fine, Hynix paid $185 million, Infineon $160 million.[43][44]
In October 2017, it was reported that a flaw, dubbed ROCA, in a code library developed by Infineon, which had been in widespread use in security products such as smartcards and TPMs, enabled private keys to be inferred from public keys. As a result, all systems depending upon the privacy of such keys were vulnerable to compromise, such as identity theft or spoofing. Affected systems include 750,000 Estonian national ID cards, 300,000 Slovak national ID cards,[45] and computers that use Microsoft BitLocker drive encryption in conjunction with an affected TPM.[46] Microsoft released a patch that works around the flaw via Windows Update immediately after the disclosure.[47]
€16.309 billion (2023)
