On November 10, 2026, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that Rapidus has not yet confirmed that its SRAM cells work, and that the company may struggle to meet its goal of starting mass production of advanced semiconductors by March 2028. What deserves attention is not only the potential impact on the mass-production date. It is how the technical delay could affect the fiscal 2027 funding plan that comes before it. The roughly ¥300 billion in commissioned funding Rapidus expects will be decided through a review of project progress, and the roughly ¥400 billion in private loans will be settled through negotiations with financial institutions. Materials submitted on October 19 to a Ministry of Finance advisory body likewise show that the commissioned funding is at the budget-request stage and that loan negotiations are ongoing.
Reports of an SRAM cell delay, and the technical progress Rapidus has disclosed
Bloomberg's report was also carried by The Japan Times. According to the sources, for Rapidus to start 2nm mass production on schedule, it needed to get SRAM cells working by summer 2026. It has not yet done so, and development is at least several months behind. Rapidus is reportedly maintaining its target of starting mass production in the second half of fiscal 2027. Separately, Dempa Shimbun Digital reported on November 11 that a plan to postpone the start of mass production by about a year has surfaced, and that it is likely to slip into fiscal 2028.
Rapidus's official plan can be confirmed in explanatory materials from the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA), submitted to the Ministry of Finance's Fiscal Investment and Loan Program subcommittee on October 19. The company aims to start mass production of 2nm-generation semiconductors in the second half of fiscal 2027 at its "IIM-1" plant in Chitose, Hokkaido, to turn operating cash flow positive around fiscal 2029, and to reach positive free cash flow and a stock market listing around fiscal 2031. The March 2028 deadline cited by Bloomberg is the final month of fiscal 2027. The main technical and funding milestones disclosed so far are as follows.
| Date | Event | Type |
|---|---|---|
| July 18, 2025 | Announced the start of prototyping of GAA (gate-all-around) transistors at IIM-1 | Technical (official) |
| End of 2025 | Released a PDK (process design kit) for early evaluation | Technical (official) |
| March 2026 | An external expert stage-gate review rated progress as "sufficient" for both front-end and back-end processes | Review (official) |
| April 11, 2026 | Rapidus announced that NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) approved its fiscal 2026 plan and budget | Funding (official) |
| Summer 2026 | Period by which SRAM cell operation reportedly had to be confirmed to meet the mass-production target | Technical (per sources) |
| October 19, 2026 | At the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program subcommittee, presented a policy of requesting ¥400 billion in industrial investment and a target of raising about ¥400 billion in private loans in fiscal 2027 | Funding (official) |
| November 10, 2026 | Bloomberg reported the SRAM cell development delay and its impact on the mass-production target | Media report |
| November 11, 2026 | Dempa Shimbun Digital reported that a plan to postpone the start of mass production by about a year had surfaced | Media report |
| Second half of fiscal 2027 | Start of mass production of 2nm-generation semiconductors | Official plan |
It is important to note that the deadline of summer 2026 for confirming SRAM cell operation comes from a report based on sources, not from a development milestone Rapidus has officially announced. The main front-end achievements the company has disclosed are the start of GAA transistor prototyping in July 2025 and the release of an early-evaluation PDK at the end of that year. Official information alone does not make it possible to judge how far the reported SRAM cell status affects those achievements or upcoming process steps. On the funding side, however, fiscal 2027 budget compilation and loan negotiations are the next major milestones.
Why confirming SRAM cell operation is a key hurdle for 2nm mass production
SRAM is semiconductor memory used for cache memory and similar purposes, enabling processors to read and write the data they need for computation at high speed, and an SRAM cell is the basic circuit that stores one bit. Processors for AI and HPC (high-performance computing) integrate large numbers of SRAM cells to build large caches. Chip design companies design circuits based on the design rules and transistor models in the PDK provided by the foundry that will manufacture them, but if SRAM cells do not operate stably, that becomes a constraint on designing and prototyping entire chips, including their caches. Confirming SRAM cell operation is therefore one of the key verification items customers use to decide whether they can adopt a new manufacturing process.
SRAM cell area and integration density have also been used by semiconductor makers as indicators of the performance of a new manufacturing process. At the international conference ISSCC 2025 in February 2025, TSMC presented 2nm-generation SRAM with a density of 38.1Mb/mm² and a cell area of 0.021µm², and Intel also reported achieving 0.021µm² with the high-density SRAM cell in its 18A process. SRAM cell scaling was said to have stalled at the 3nm generation in 2022, but the two companies' announcements showed that further miniaturization had begun to progress. Intel explained in its paper that with GAA structures, transistor width can be adjusted to suit the application, and this design flexibility is also tied to higher SRAM cell density.
Rapidus's implementation plan states that, by the start of mass production in the second half of fiscal 2027, it will raise transistor performance and yield to a level "sufficient to win customers." The company is in talks with more than 60 prospective customers, and Fujitsu and IBM have also expressed an intention to use Rapidus for semiconductor production and other purposes. However, the existence of prospective customers and statements of intent to use the company do not mean that mass-production technology is complete or that formal manufacturing contracts have been concluded. President Atsuyoshi Koike himself described progress in mass-production preparation as "only at the first station on the mountain" at a press conference in February 2026. If SRAM cell development is delayed, it could affect customers' decisions on whether to adopt the process and, as a result, spill over into raising private capital for mass production.
How will the roughly ¥700 billion expected in fiscal 2027 be finalized?
Japanese government support for Rapidus has mainly taken two forms: commissioned funding for research and development, and equity investment. Commissioned funding through NEDO reached about ¥1.7 trillion through fiscal 2025, and in fiscal 2026 a total of ¥631.5 billion was budgeted, consisting of ¥514.1 billion for front-end processes and ¥117.4 billion for back-end processes. Equity investment through the IPA, meanwhile, was announced on February 27, 2026 for the ¥100 billion allocated for fiscal 2025, and the execution of the ¥150 billion for fiscal 2026 was announced on June 5 of the same year. Thirty-two private companies have also invested a total of ¥167.6 billion.
For fiscal 2027, roughly ¥300 billion in commissioned funding is expected, but according to the October 19 subcommittee materials it is still at the "budget request" stage. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has indicated that it will decide later on the details of government support for fiscal 2027–2028, taking into account progress on R&D and the business plan as well as the status of private fundraising. In fiscal 2026, after an external expert stage-gate review in March rated progress as sufficient for both front-end and back-end processes, Rapidus announced on April 11 that NEDO had approved its plan and budget. In other words, for fiscal 2027 commissioned funding too, technical progress and the status of private fundraising will serve as inputs to the decision, in addition to securing the budget.
Private loans are raised through a different mechanism from government commissioned funding. Rapidus plans to borrow a total of ¥2 trillion from private financial institutions to fund the expansion of production lines and other needs, and aims to raise around ¥400 billion of it in fiscal 2027. However, the ¥2 trillion figure is based on non-binding letters of intent submitted by private financial institutions the previous year. The October 19 materials also explain that coordination and negotiations with financial institutions are continuing toward actual lending, and loan agreements and the disbursement of funds have not been finalized.
Building up equity capital is also important for obtaining large-scale loans. If borrowings increase, then, all else being equal, the ratio of equity to total assets falls, so additional investment and similar measures are needed to maintain the financial soundness lenders require. Against this background, the IPA has indicated a policy of requesting a total of ¥400 billion in industrial investment through the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program from the following fiscal year onward. However, this is a request spanning multiple fiscal years and presupposes that each year's request is approved.
Thus, the roughly ¥700 billion Rapidus expects in fiscal 2027, consisting of about ¥300 billion in commissioned funding and about ¥400 billion in private loans, is unconfirmed on both counts at present. The former must pass through the government's budget compilation and a review of the business plan, and the latter through negotiations with financial institutions. This ¥700 billion also does not include the ¥400 billion in industrial investment requested over multiple fiscal years, or the target of around ¥1 trillion in private equity investment, for which annual amounts have not been given. These differ in the nature of the funds and the periods they cover, so they cannot simply be added together and treated as the amount scheduled to be raised in fiscal 2027.
Based on the fiscal 2026 precedent, approval of the fiscal 2027 commissioned project's plan and budget is likely to come before the October 2027–March 2028 target window for starting mass production. Negotiations with financial institutions over private loans are also already under way. Therefore, if the SRAM cell development delay is real, its effects may show up in the review of the fiscal 2027 business plan and in funding terms before they surface as a change to the mass-production date. In assessing this report, it is important to check not only whether the mass-production target is maintained or changed, but also whether the necessary funds are secured as planned.
Government backing is strong, but uncertainties remain in the funding plan
A technical delay will not necessarily affect fundraising immediately. In the March 2026 stage-gate review by external experts, progress was rated as sufficient for both front-end and back-end processes, and the policy of requesting ¥400 billion in industrial investment was presented on October 19, before this report. Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ryosei Akazawa has described Rapidus as "a national project that must be made to succeed for the national interest," and, according to Kyodo News, said in Chitose on April 11 that the business was "progressing smoothly." Rapidus's implementation plan also includes the company's own 2025 estimate that, in the global market for 2nm semiconductors in fiscal 2030, supply will fall short of demand by roughly 10–30%. Given this government support and market outlook, there is some basis for the view that financial support will continue even if technical development runs somewhat late.
However, the March 2026 stage-gate review took place before the summer deadline by which, according to this report, SRAM cell operation needed to be confirmed. The details of the review are not public, and it is impossible to verify from outside how far it factored in the technical problems now being reported. Strong government backing for the business lowers the likelihood that funding will be cut off, but the situation, in which commissioned funding is at the budget-request stage and private loans are under negotiation, has not changed. The question here is not whether government support will be terminated, but when and under what conditions the funds needed for fiscal 2027 will be finalized.
The view that a technical delay could affect the funding plan ahead of the production schedule can be tested against three upcoming developments. First, whether the fiscal 2027 government budget proposal and Fiscal Investment and Loan Program plan include the roughly ¥300 billion in commissioned funding and the industrial investment for Rapidus as requested. Second, whether NEDO's approval of the fiscal 2027 business plan and budget is announced around April, as in fiscal 2026. Third, whether the execution of the roughly ¥400 billion in private loans is announced before October 2027, when the mass-production target window begins. If all of these proceed as planned, the view that a technical delay affects the finalization of the funding plan ahead of production would not be supported.
Rapidus's progress is scheduled to be reported to the Diet roughly once every three months until mass production begins. If future reports clarify the status of SRAM cell operation confirmation and yield improvement, it will become possible to assess more accurately the actual extent of the technical delay pointed out in this report. At the same time, how the government's project reviews, budget decisions, and the execution of private loans proceed will also be an important basis for judgment. Whether the goal of starting mass production in the second half of fiscal 2027 is achievable depends not only on progress in technical development but also on whether the fundraising that supports it proceeds as planned.