Zoho shelves $700 million chipmaking venture

BENGALURU: Homegrown SaaS unicorn Zoho has shelved its plan to build a $700 million compound semiconductor fabrication plant.

Regarding the semiconductor fab investment plan, Sridhar Vembu, chief scientist at Zoho, said, “Since this business is so capital intensive, it requires government backing. We wanted to be absolutely sure of the technology path before we took taxpayer money. We did not have that confidence in the technology, so our board decided to shelve the idea for the time being, until we find a better technological approach.”