SemiWiki.com - Podcast EP321: An Overview of Soitec’s Worldwide Leadership in Engineered Substrates with Steve Babureck

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Daniel is joined by Steve Babureck, executive vice president of strategy and president of Soitec USA. He joined the company in 2011 and held various positions including head of the finance department of the solar business in the United States, head of strategic marketing, and head of Group investor Relations in San Diego and Singapore.… Read More

Hello, my name is Daniel Nenny, founder of SemaiWiki, the Open Forum for Semiconductor Professionals. Welcome to the Semiconductor Insiders podcast series. My guest today is Steve Babarek, Executive Vice President of Strategy and President of Soytek, USA. He joined the company in 2011 and held various positions, including head of the finance department of the solar business in the United States, head of strategic marketing, and head of group investor relationships in San Diego and Singapore.

Welcome to the podcast, Steve, and it's a pleasure to meet you. Hi, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me. So you've recently stepped into the role of Soitex U.S. president. So can you share a bit about your background and what drew you to this position? So as you reminded this, I joined the company in 2011. I held various positions in the company. My background is in engineering,

is a material science engineering, I started my career in Asia, working as an application engineer. And later on, I transitioned into the world of finance, I work as a semiconductor analyst, and then I joined Soytte back in 11. This new role is, I would say, normal evolution in the sense that I was already running a strategy from Singapore with a team that is in Asia, in Europe, and now in the US.

I spent six years in Singapore working a lot with our partners in in Asia. But with this with this role, which is meeting the expectations from the company and the long-term objectives, our intent is to put more focus on AI, really double down our efforts in AI, whether it relates to data centers or edge computing applications, I'm sure we'll talk about that, and secure our leadership in RS, mobile communication, and in the US, a large part of our FABLIS and founder ecosystem is there. And last but not least, increase our penetration in energy efficiency solutions,

whether you find them in electric vehicles or in data centers. For all this reason, so my job is global, but we really want to put more efforts in the US and especially on AI. So it made a lot of sense for me to move back to the US. I was in the US before Singapore. I was in California.

I was in San Diego. But now I'm on the East Coast in Boston. And what are your immediate priorities as you take on this new role? And how do they align with Soytec's broader global strategy? So So it's a global strategy is to expand the leadership in engineer substrates for various end markets from smartphones to automotive industrial edge in Kali. So our leadership is important. Our leadership comes from our innovation engine, which is mostly in Europe, but we are increasing our partnerships in Asia and in the U.S. with the MIT.

The second thing is the ecosystem. Reaching out the ecosystem is very important. And when we think about the ecosystem, we think, of course, about our direct customers, foundries and IDMs. But we're also thinking about the Fablis, which are designing the chips and driving their technology roadmap, and therefore the materials and the substrates that we use for their chips. And, of course, there's an increasing number of OEMs or system integrators are also developing their own chips and for which we need to be very close to to understand the key inflections when it comes to the use of specific substrars. Sooitech long-term strategic objective is to continue to grow, grow faster than the semiconductor engineer substruits, which grows even faster than the semiconductor market. And as the director, chief strategy officer of Soitech and president of the U.S., we will put us, so this role in the activities are global, but we will put a specific emphasis on. on the US ecosystem and US strategic relationships.

Interesting. So how is Sootech expanding its presence in the US? And what opportunities do you see for growth across the semiconductor supply chain? So we see the US as a key decision center for the years to come. Of course, when you think about manufacturing of the chips, a lot of this capacity has

move to Asia, Taiwan, Korea, China, Singapore, and Japan. And we can, of course, cover our customers and our partners from Asia, but that's on the manufacturing side. We know that from a decision-making standpoint, the Fablas and the system integrators, when you think about AI but not only, a lot of are in the U.S., and, of course, the fabulous ecosystem is also very vibrant. So it's very important for us to make sure that on an everyday basis are people in the U.S., and we have several people interfacing with customers, sales, business development, product group, innovation, strategy, all of our people, and we're a small team, right, in the U.S. at the present. But we are networking with the right people

that take the long-term decisions when it comes to innovation world maps. Well, you know, substrates are critical now with the complex chips we're making. So how are Soitex engineered substrates helping overcome performance and efficiency bottlenecks in the AI and the high-performance computing error that we're in right now?

Right. Well, in various ways, but I would say that an engineer substrate is basically a substrate on steroids. Okay. And in order to make an engineer substrate, you need several substrate. You need the handle substrate. You need the donor substrate. So already there's a lot of, there's a lot of knowledge and intellectual property that goes into defining the right substrate that you need, the right bulk substrate that you require. And typically, the engineer substrate design

can be made hand to hand with the problems that the system integrators are trying to solve. So energy efficiency is one of them, power consumption. When you think about battery-powered devices, linearity when you think about RF systems. When you think about the scope of artificial intelligence, we developed a product called FDSOI, which stands for fully depleted SOI, which basically

is an ultra thin layer of crystalline silicon coming from a donor wafer on top of a very thin silicon dioxide layer, also called the box on top of a bulk silicon layer. And we can do that typically in 300 millimeter diameter. This substrates are the kind of Swiss knife for analog mixed signal, low power applications for edge computing applications, which

ranges from radars when it comes to ADAS for automotive or vision processors for mobile eye. Think about microcontrollers. The new STM product line 18 nanometer is also based on FDSOI. So every time you have an application where you need to truly optimize the performance of the transistor when the system is on,

while at the same time, how you have having the lowest energy consumption. Think about a system in a surveillance camera, for example, that is not connected to the grid. So this FDSOI substrate can cover multiple applications, including edge computing systems. Another product that we have developed to serve the data center application,

especially optical transceivers, is silicon photonics. And silicon photonics is very popular today because every new data centers that has optimized optical transceiver capabilities requires silicon photonics. Whenever you hear about silicon photonics, it's actually SOI. Again, the top crystal silicon layer is the optical wave guide in which the photons flow through.

And this wave guide is on top of a silicon dioxide layer on top of a bulk silicon layer. And with silicon photonics, you're unable to drastically reduce the latency, optimize the bandwidth, and reduce the overall cost and energy spending of your system. And those are products that are commercialized today. And of course, as you can imagine, we also have products in what we call incubators, which are specific R&D programs, and what we, and all the technology that we're exploring to continue to fuel the demand for new materials in the space of AI. Very interesting. So what unique advantage does Europe's materials ecosystem bring to the global semiconductor race?

And how is Soytek bridging that innovation with the US manufacturing? Right. Right. I think to, you know, the first, the first asset that Europe has is talent, access to talent, access to a very good level of education, which can be a little bit more affordable than in other regions of the world. So access to talent, access to top-notch education, especially when it comes to, to sciences, which are required for to enable semiconductor development, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc., then the fact that Europe is well interconnected. I am in Paris today and in a couple of hours, I can be in Belgium, I can be in Amsterdam, I can be in the Netherlands, I can be in the UK, I can be in Switzerland, and looking at the map of of R&D centers and activities for semiconductors in Europe, you know that there are several clusters.

There's a cluster in France where Soyttec is from near Grenoble. You have a cluster in Zurich with IBM. You have a cluster, of course, in Leuven, Belgium with IMEC. You have the Franofer Institute in Germany, et cetera. So the fact that Europe is in a way, rather small wall connected. That's also a plus. And then you have specific measures, financial incentives, like a tax credit, for example, for R&D, that also support the development

of material finds for semiconductors. And final question, Steve, what is Switech's approach to material innovation? And how is that influence application and integration of company engineered substrates across different consumer or different customer technologies? Well, Soitech DNA is innovation. And the reason why is because Soitech is a spin-off of one of the best R&D Institute when it comes to semiconductor engineering, which is a letty. So from the get-go, we decided to solve complex problems.

in the world of automotive, RF, now data centers. And we try to solve problems by bringing, designing new materials, new substrate, along with our customers. But the fact that we have this very high energy to begin with, to develop new technologies, new products, with a large share of our revenues dedicated to gross R&D. So now we're a low double digit of our revenues spent in R&D, just developing materials, alongside with strong relationship with the Foundries and the Fablis

to understand the problems that these companies are trying to solve. With the global reach that we built over the years, strong base in France, strong base in Singapore and other Asian countries expanding base in the U.S., we are able to reach out to the key companies that innovate in the world of semiconductors and will then able to offer them our platform. form of engineer substrates, from SOI, which is based on silicon, to new products that may be based on compound semiconductor materials such as gallant nitride or silicon carbide, which are also very useful in the world of energy efficiency, whether you think about EVs or data centers. Great conversation, Steve. It's such a pleasure to meet you. And we've been working with Soytek for several years now. It's really been a great experience. Hopefully we can meet at IEDM. Absolutely. And thank you again, Daniel, for the invitation. Looking forward to catching up with you some more. That concludes our

podcast. Thank you all for listening and have a great day.