3D chip systems create formidable opportunities for Europe and the Netherlands, believes Hamed Sadeghian, CEO of Nearfield Instruments. He sees new business models emerging in the production of silicon systems and equipment. Seizing those opportunities will require courage, however, as well as a willingness to collaborate. Europe can put itself back on the map in the semiconductor industry. That will require rolling up our sleeves, but the conditions are ideal, says Hamed Sadeghian, CEO of Nearfield Instruments. The rules of the game in semiconductors are changing at breakneck speed, both technologically and economically. The entire field of heterogeneous integration and the trend toward building 3D silicon systems are creating abundant opportunities for European industry to establish new positions. The Netherlands is well placed to play a leading role because of the presence of ASML, ASM, Besi and Nearfield. “These companies share a defining strength: They excel at architecting and integrating highly complex manufacturing systems. This systems engineering capability – combining technologies from many specialized suppliers into a single optimized platform – has become one of the Netherlands’ greatest competitive advantages,” Sadeghian writes in his new vision paper. Bits&Chips’ Dutch state of semicon 2026 This article is part of the Bits&Chips special edition on the Dutch state of semicon, published on 23 October 2026. Order your hard copy of the special at info@techwatch.nl. Add integrated photonics and co-packaged optics, and our starting position is unique. Bits&Chips discusses this with Sadeghian. His proposal is a call for industry to collaborate intensively. The big players in the Netherlands need to seize the opportunity, he argues, through a joint venture, supported by the R&D competencies present in TNO, Imec and Dutch universities, and guided by a scientific advisory board composed of selected fellows of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering (NAE). First and foremost, Sadeghian sees a business model emerging that not yet exists. Call it a 3D systems foundry. Not in the sense of a traditional OSAT (outsourced assembly and test), but a joint venture that assembles 3D silicon systems. This organization can work with a black box model. It takes responsibility for both systems architecture, systems integration and manufacturing. Customers come to it with their requirements, and the 3D fab selects the components (chiplets) and production technologies for a system offering the optimal performance and energy consumption. Such a 3D factory will, of course, need production technology, and here, too, Sadeghian – with enlightened self-interest – has an idea. By working very closely together, equipment manufacturers could offer complete solutions for such 3D fabs. Inspired by Applied Materials’ Kinex hybrid-bonding line, they could integrate lithography, chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP), plasma activation, metrology and bonding. Wafers would enter such a complete solution at the front end, and monolithic system blocks would emerge at the back end. These could subsequently be finished and packaged by an OSAT. Hamed Sadeghian proposes a Dutch-led venture in scaling systems-of-chips to position the Netherlands at the center of Europe’s semiconductor future. Growing pains Now a decade old, Nearfield Instruments successfully crossed the valley of death as a startup. Sadeghian experiences the scale-up years as many times more challenging. “It’s not comparable. I call it the death zone, the term they use in mountaineering when you’re above 8,000 meters. If you can reach this height, you’re one of a kind.” However, above 8,000 meters, the partial pressure of oxygen is only about one-third of that at sea level. Climbers need to keep moving at the highest level of focus while operating close to their physiological limits to successfully minimize their time in the death zone. Sadeghian: “That’s also what we have to do: Execute, keep mov