The Lab That Decides Which Chip Technologies the World Actually Builds

The R&D center that snaps the entire semiconductor ecosystem to a grid. In this episode of the Semiconductor Leadership Podcast, host Salah Nasri sits down with Patrick Vandenameele, CEO of imec, to talk about how the world's leading nanoelectronics research center actually works, what it means to lead it at this moment in history, and why the most underestimated thing imec does is know when to stop. Patrick joined imec in 1996, left to found three deep tech companies built directly on imec technology, held senior leadership roles at Corvo and HiSilicon, and returned in 2017 to drive imec's R&D and portfolio agenda. He served as Chief Portfolio Officer, then Co-Chief Operating Officer, before assuming the CEO role in April 2026. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering and has overseen 11 successful product launches and over 100 million units shipped globally. This conversation goes deep. We cover Patrick's three priorities for year one as CEO, why CMOS 2.0 is the only credible path to continuing the 10x-per-decade scaling pace, how imec has been doing hybrid integration since 2006 while the rest of the industry is just catching up, what it really means to turn 7,000 researchers into 7,000 people with 100,000 agents on top, and why photonics could deliver a 10,000x gain in ten years where logic scaling delivers ten. Guest: Patrick Vandenameele, CEO of imec Host: Salah Nasri If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe, like, comment, and share. It takes a village to raise a chip, and a village to raise a podcast. #imec #Semiconductors #CMOS #Photonics #AdvancedPackaging #SemiconductorLeadershipPodcast #DeepTech #Nanoelectronics 00:52 Rapid Fire Round 08:42 Career Path 12:19 Framing imec's Value 14:55 Year One Priorities 21:00 AI Inside imec 24:19 CMOS 2.0 and the Next Decade 27:23 Photonics 28:56 Advanced Packaging 31:58 Sustainability 34:17 Legacy