Mumbai: India’s semiconductor ambitions have spent years being associated with silicon fabs, enormous investments and the glamorous promise of becoming a global chip hub. But some of the country’s more consequential semiconductor work may happen in a material that rarely gets the headline treatment: gallium nitride, or GaN.
Hyderabad-based Spintronics AI Semiconductors has signed an MoU with CSIR-CEERI to advance production-ready GaN technology and examine the feasibility of establishing an indigenous GaN technology-development and fabrication facility in India. The partnership is intended to create a technology and design-transfer pathway between laboratory research and commercial manufacturing.
It is a relatively small announcement beside India’s multi-billion-dollar semiconductor projects. But strategically, it points towards something more interesting: India is beginning to look beyond simply assembling chips and towards the specialised technologies that make modern power, communication and high-frequency systems possible.
Silicon Has Competition Now
GaN is a compound semiconductor material with properties that make it attractive for applications where conventional silicon starts reaching its limits.
Its uses include power electronics, radio-frequency communications, telecom equipment, defence, aerospace, satellite systems and electric mobility. CSIR-CEERI has already developed indigenous fabrication technology for GaN-based blue and white LEDs, demonstrating that the institute’s involvement is not beginning from an entirely blank laboratory bench.
The new collaboration is therefore less about inventing GaN from scratch and more about pushing existing expertise towards production-ready technology.
That distinction matters.
A research demonstration is one thing. Making repeatable devices at commercial scale, with acceptable yields and competitive economics, is the considerably less glamorous part.
India Already Has A GaN Foot In The Door
The latest partnership also arrives after another significant Indian GaN development.
In May 2026, the government approved ₹3,936 crore of combined investment for two semiconductor facilities in Gujarat. One of them, proposed by Crystal Matrix, includes a compound-semiconductor fabrication and ATMP facility for Mini/Micro-LED displays and GaN foundry services, including epitaxy on six-inch wafers.
That facility is designed for applications ranging from large commercial displays to smartphones, tablets, automotive displays and extended-reality devices.
So the Spintronics-CEERI announcement is not appearing in isolation. It fits into an emerging domestic ecosystem where GaN is being considered for both manufacturing and specialised device applications.
The Market Is Still Small, Which Is Precisely The Point
Spintronics AI’s founder and CEO Raghu Varma estimates India’s GaN semiconductor market at around $224 million in 2026, potentially reaching nearly $1.88 billion by 2033. Those are company estimates rather than government figures or independently verified market totals, so they should be treated accordingly.
Even at that projected level, GaN remains a specialised market compared with conventional silicon.
But specialised does not mean irrelevant.
A semiconductor technology does not need to replace every silicon chip to become strategically important. It needs to dominate particular applications where its electrical characteristics justify the additional complexity and cost.
That is where GaN gets interesting.
The Real Prize Is Not Just A Fab
For India, the more significant question is whether GaN research can evolve into an ecosystem.
That means more than putting equipment inside a fabrication facility. It requires:
- Indigenous device and process IP.
- Reliable wafer and materials supply.
- Engineers trained in compound-semiconductor manufacturing.
- Packaging and testing capabilities.
- Customers willing to qualify domestically produced devices.
- Consistent manufacturing yields.
The Spintronics-CEERI agreement specifically focuses on technology and design transfer, technology requirements, infrastructure and fabrication capabilities.
That could help bridge one of India’s persistent semiconductor gaps: the distance between excellent research and commercially repeatable manufacturing.
Science is quite happy with one successful prototype. Industry, rather annoyingly, wants thousands of them to behave identically.
India’s Semiconductor Bill Is Already Large
The financial backdrop is substantial.
As of 2026, 12 semiconductor manufacturing projects had been approved under the India Semiconductor Mission, representing more than ₹1.64 lakh crore in investment commitments. The projects include silicon and compound-semiconductor fabs, a GaN Micro-LED display fab and nine packaging facilities.
The government has subsequently approved Semicon 2.0 with a ₹1,27,500 crore outlay, covering design, equipment and materials, fabs, advanced packaging, research and talent.
These are programme outlays and project investment commitments — not equivalent to money already spent.
There is also a useful reality check: semiconductor manufacturing remains expensive, technically demanding and dependent on a global supply chain. Building a domestic GaN capability does not suddenly make India independent of imported equipment, substrates, chemicals or specialised manufacturing inputs.
It simply gives the country another piece of the puzzle.
The Quiet Semiconductor Race
The attraction of GaN is ultimately pragmatic.
More efficient power conversion can matter in chargers, vehicles and industrial equipment. High-frequency performance matters in communications and aerospace. Higher-temperature and high-power applications can benefit from compound-semiconductor technologies.
The downside is that GaN manufacturing has its own technical challenges, while silicon enjoys decades of accumulated manufacturing scale and an enormous ecosystem.
So this is not a story about silicon becoming obsolete.
It is about India recognising that the semiconductor industry is too complicated to be reduced to one material.
The next phase of India’s chip story may therefore be less about building the biggest fab and more about owning specific pieces of semiconductor technology that the world increasingly needs.
GaN is one such piece.
Small material. Rather large ambitions.
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