Viettel breaks ground on Vietnam’s first semiconductor plant

Details: John Tanner; Category: Enterprise Ecosystems; 20 January 2026; 10228 views

Military-owned telco Viettel Group announced on Friday it has kicked off construction of Vietnam’s first semiconductor chip manufacturing plant to support the government’s ambition to develop a fully-fledged semiconductor ecosystem.

According to a LinkedIn post from Viettel, the plant is being built in Hoa Lac High-Tech Park in Hanoi on an area of 27 hectares. Viettel said the project is scheduled for completion in 2030, including facility construction, technology transfer, process completion, and operational efficiency enhancements.

Viettel chairman and CEO Lieutenant General Tao Duc Thang said trial production is expected to begin by the end of 2027, according to a government statement.

The semiconductor plant will supply chips for electronics sectors such as aerospace, telecoms, IoT, automotive, medical equipment and automation.

The project is being implemented by Viettel in accordance with a mandate from the Ministry of National Defense and based on a government resolution to create its own semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem.

"This is a crucial step toward materializing our national semiconductor industry development strategy," said Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at the groundbreaking ceremony on Friday. “It creates a foundation for Viet Nam to integrate more deeply into the global value chain through science, technology and innovation.”

According to a government statement, the country has domestic semiconductor production capabilities for product definition, system design, detailed design, packaging and testing, and integration and verification, but not chip fabrication. The plant will supply that last missing piece of Vietnam’s semiconductor ecosystem, the statement said.

The Vietnamese government has been pushing a national strategy to boost its semiconductor sector for the last couple of years. In 2024, PM Pham urged the country’s four main state-owned telcos – Viettel, VNPT, MobiFone, and Gtel Mobile – to take the lead on semiconductor chip R&D and production as part of that strategy.

In March 2025, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (under the Ministry of Information and Communications) reportedly announced that Vietnam would invest about VND12.8 trillion (US$501.2 million) to build a small-scale chip manufacturing plant for research, design, production, packaging and testing.

Last month, Viettel revealed it had held “high-level bilateral working sessions” with Japanese companies Nikon Corporation and Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) as part of its preparation to help build the plant.