KLA sells the machines every fab must buy — inspection, metrology, process control — and its 28 October earnings call disclosed a significant land purchase in India for a new campus, while ET reports it is weighing manufacturing here. Pair that with Spintronics AI's ₹2,800 crore gallium-nitride plant at Ujjain and Strat360's finding that India's next five years lie in packaging, components and compound chips, and the gap is clear: equipment, materials and metrology are the value-added layer we still import. Three asks follow.
KLA does not make chips. It makes the machines that decide whether a chip is worth shipping: inspection, metrology, process control. On its 28 October earnings call, CFO Bren Higgins said capital spending will rise to $600–800 million a year, and that "a significant land purchase in India for a new campus" drove much of the September quarter's spend. The Economic Times adds that the $12.74 billion company "is eyeing a manufacturing foray in India", beyond the R&D it already runs here.
That matters more than another fab headline. A fab is a building that buys tools. A toolmaker that assembles and services here sells to every fab, everywhere, for twenty years, and pulls optics, precision machining, calibration and clean-room logistics into existence behind it.
Two other items belong together. Andhra Jyothy reported on 29 October that Spintronics AI of Hyderabad will build a gallium-nitride fab at Ujjain on about 40 acres, with a Letter of Intent from Madhya Pradesh, nearly ₹2,800 crore of investment and around 1,000 direct jobs. And a Strat360 report in EE Times India finds the next five years favour packaging and test, components and selected mature-node and compound-semiconductor production, with mobile-phone value addition at 18–20%, which the component scheme aims to lift to 35–40%. Semicon 2.0, approved in July 2026 at ₹1,27,500 crore, is the first instrument that can reach the equipment and materials layer.
I have argued value addition for years, usually one link down the chain. In December 2014 I suggested near-zero duty on raw materials and components, a little more on sub-assemblies and the most on finished goods, so that assembly would pull components in behind it. In "Chips to Ships" (September 2025) I wrote that "final assembly is only as strong as the upstream ... component-makers and sub-assembly units". Tools obey the same rule: a fab that imports every etcher, probe station and calibration service has assembled a factory, not built one.
Three things, then, that I would ask of MeitY and the India Semiconductor Mission:
- Tie KLA, and whoever follows it, to a published Indian supplier-qualification programme — milestones, dates and numbers: how many Indian vendors qualified, for which part families, at what share of the bill of materials. A plan no one can read is a press release.
- Make every ISM and Semicon 2.0 fab and ATMP unit report yearly the share of its installed tools serviced in India, and the share assembled or integrated here. What is measured gets localised.
- Treat GaN and SiC power devices as a strategic category, not an appendix to logic. The buyers are already here — EV drivetrains and data-centre power. Set a stated capacity target and a qualification route into Indian auto and power-electronics firms.
None of this happens in a quarter; tool qualification takes years, and no supplier moves a supply chain on the strength of one land purchase. But this is the first time a process-control major has put a campus, and possibly a factory, on our soil. I would rather we negotiate the terms now than admire the ribbon later.
With regards,
Hemen Parekh
www.Iam-Immortal.ai / www.IndiaAGI.ai / www.YourContentCreator.in
29 Oct 2026
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