Taiwan is putting government money behind homegrown chip tools and design software, a push to keep its lead in semiconductors and cut its reliance on foreign suppliers.

• Starting next year, Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council will fund university labs to co-develop advanced chipmaking equipment with local toolmakers.
• The goal is to lift domestic equipment companies, which today sit well behind the foreign giants that dominate the market.
• A second program targets chip design software, the tools engineers use to lay out and test chips, now controlled by a handful of foreign firms.
• AI has opened new ground in advanced packaging and stacking chips together, where the big foreign players have not locked things down yet.
• New shared facilities are planned too, including a small 28-nanometer pilot production line and 3D packaging line so startups and smaller firms can test their designs.

Outlook: Money starts flowing next year, but building a real local equipment and software industry will take years, not quarters.