Applied Materials agrees to lift its Besi stake to about 20%, with no plan to go higher

The shares will not change hands until a US antitrust waiting period ends or is cut short.

Published Monday, October 26, 2026 at 4:37 PM ET · Updated Monday, October 26, 2026 at 4:38 PM ET

Applied Materials has agreed to buy shares that will lift its stake in Besi to about 20 per cent of Besi's outstanding shares. Applied does not intend to raise the stake above 20 per cent, and it does not intend to seek a seat on Besi's board. The shares will not change hands until a US antitrust waiting period ends or is cut short.

Applied first invested in Besi in April 2025. At that time it disclosed a 9 per cent stake, bought through market transactions that needed no regulatory approval. eeNews Europe reported that Applied said then it had no plans to buy more shares or seek a board seat. Today's purchase adds to that holding.

Applied and Besi have worked together since 2020. On October 1, 2026, Besi joined Applied's EPIC Center as an Innovation Partner. Applied says its joint work with Besi covers 3D IC scaling, logic and memory integration, thermo-compression bonding scaling, and die-on-wafer, die-on-die and die-on-panel integration platforms. Prabu Raja, president of Applied's Semiconductor Products Group, said Applied is adding to its Besi investment because hybrid bonding and next-generation interconnect architectures are becoming critical to energy-efficient AI computing.

The 20 per cent limit and the absence of a board seat set the scope of the stake. The stake centres on Besi's hybrid bonding and advanced packaging capability. Applied struck a partnership of a similar kind with Intel on AI chips on October 6, 2026. Until the antitrust waiting period ends, the shares remain with their current owners.