Lam Research unveiled its 'Velocity Imperative' strategy to accelerate development and production in semiconductor manufacturing sites, presenting the direction for its global manufacturing system and collaboration methods.

Tim Archer, Chairman and CEO of Lam Research, announced the strategy during his keynote speech at Semicon Korea 2026 in Seoul on February 11, presenting strengthening manufacturing and supply chain resilience, accelerating the implementation of autonomous fabs, and co-innovating with customers and industry partners as the three main pillars.

Lam Research announced that it has doubled its global manufacturing capabilities and strengthened its supply chain over the past four years. The company explained that it accelerated response speeds by expanding production facilities in areas adjacent to customers and adopting automation and digital technologies, while increasing productivity sixfold and reducing scrap costs by 25% through the advancement of logistics center operations. Korea was cited as a key hub for this strategy. Lam Research Korea announced that as of 2025, it achieved production of over 5 trillion won and domestic procurement worth 1 trillion won, recording direct and indirect economic effects of 13 trillion won and the creation of over 25,000 direct and indirect jobs. It added that it is strengthening ties with the domestic semiconductor ecosystem by operating three manufacturing facilities and three logistics centers in Gyeonggi Province.

Regarding autonomous fabs, the company explained that it is establishing a system to leverage AI-based equipment intelligence to expand process and productivity models verified at a single fab to a multi-regional fab network and reduce process variations between regions. It stated that the collaborative robot 'Dextro Cobot' performs repetitive tasks with an initial pass rate of 99.9%, reducing process variability by more than twofold compared to manual labor. The company added that since its introduction in late 2024, the types of tasks to which it applies have increased sixfold, and it plans to expand its application to up to 80% of preventive maintenance tasks over the next three years.

In terms of joint innovation, the company stated that it is accelerating development speed by exploring process and hardware combinations utilizing artificial intelligence and virtual twins. It explained that the 'Lam Research Korea Technology Center (KTC),' established in 2023, has increased development speed by 2 to 2.5 times compared to the past through joint experimentation and verification with clients, and that 'Aqaara' and 'Kryo 3.0' have shown initial results in the DRAM and NAND sectors. Furthermore, the company announced that it will establish a new 'Velocity Lab' in Korea to accelerate the exploration of technologies in the early stages of advanced chip development, and operate it as a future node research hub linked to its global research network.