‘Designed in Bharat’ 2 nm chip by Qualcomm’: Ashwini Vaishnaw unveils cutting-edge, indigenous 2-nanometre chip

Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw launched a cutting-edge, high-tech 2-nanometre chip manufactured by Qualcomm on Saturday, February 7. Speaking at an event in Bengaluru, the Minister stated that the latest development marks a transformation in the country's earlier role as a back-office destination to a hub for end-to-end semiconductor product development.

Ashwini Vaishnaw launches 2-nanometre chip

"Our country is making major progress in semiconductor manufacturing design and is building the entire ecosystem in our country... I'm very happy to share with you that today we unveiled the two-nanometer wafer and two-nanometer chip at Qualcomm," Vaishnaw said at a press conference.

He added that this was being done as part of a series of many companies.

"AMD has done it, and now Qualcomm has done it. It's a series of developments where companies are now designing end-to-end products in India," he remarked.

The Union Minister said that the entire process is now being conducted in India, ranging from customer product definition to final silicon design, tapeout, and validation, according to ANI.

While showcasing a silicon wafer in his hand at the event, Ashwini  Vaishnaw elaborated on its capabilities as well as the precision manufacturing involved in it.

He disclosed that each die in the wafer has about "20 to 30 billion transistors."

"This transistor density is used to design the silicon. This is essentially a single chip with a GPU and a CPU. The end product that comes out of this is this kind of module, which becomes an AI computer on the desktop of any person, on the edge, meaning within a camera, within a Wi-Fi router, or within a device on any machine, or any moving car, automobile, train, or aeroplane," the Minister said.

Discussing India's semiconductor talent developed under the Semicon mission 1.0, Vaishnaw said the government has set a target to have 85,000 semiconductor-trained people over a period of 10 years.

"I'm happy to share that, over 4 years, we have trained 67,000 semiconductor engineers. This is now available at 315 universities and colleges, where all semiconductor design-related EDA tools are available. The students are designing chips... The final product is being validated, and it's a strong capability because few universities and countries worldwide have this kind of model," he said.

Recalling his Davos visit, he further shared the model with semiconductor industry leaders and added that they were "very happy about it and believe that the 1 million talent gap in the semiconductor industry will largely be filled by talent from India."

In Budget 2026, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the government will launch the second edition of the India Semiconductor Mission.

Vaishnaw said the mission will prioritise indigenous chip design and manufacturing.

"In Semicon 2.0, the topmost priority will be designing companies. Design companies, design startups that can design a product, take it to the market, become the next Qualcomm from India, hopefully get that huge innovation, that entire energy which is there in our startups into deep tech. That will be a focus area," PTI quoted Vaishnaw as saying.

‘Designed in Bharat’ 2 nm chip by Qualcomm

📍Bengaluru pic.twitter.com/Hk9Kq6wZAy

— Ashwini Vaishnaw (@AshwiniVaishnaw) February 7, 2026

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