Shares in Dutch chip equipment maker Besi jumped on Tuesday after US rival Applied Materials announced plans to lift its holding to roughly 20% from 9%, tightening ties built around technology used to make AI hardware.
Dutch company BE Semiconductor Industries (Besi), which makes machines used to assemble and package semiconductors, saw its stock climb more than 10% to over €160 per share by early afternoon on Tuesday.
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The jump came after Applied Materials, one of the world's biggest makers of chipmaking equipment, announced late on Monday that it would increase its holding in Besi to about 20%, from the 9% it has owned since April 2025.
In a statement, Applied said it had signed an accelerated share purchase agreement to buy the additional stock, with delivery depending on a review under US antitrust law.
The California-based group called the stake a long-term investment and said it "currently has no intention to increase its investment in Besi beyond approximately 20%".
Nor will it ask for a place on the Dutch company's board, the firm added.
Prabu Raja, president of Applied's semiconductor products group, said in the same statement that the company was increasing its stake because hybrid bonding and next-generation ways of connecting chips are increasingly becoming critical to energy-efficient AI computing.
"We also look forward to furthering our strategic collaboration with Besi," Raja concluded.
Hybrid bonding and AI
The companies' collaboration on hybrid bonding dates back to 2020.
The technique joins chips directly to one another without tiny solder bumps, allowing them to be stacked more tightly, and is seen as key to the next generation of AI processors and memory.
On 1 October, in a joint statement, they widened the partnership to other packaging technologies, with Besi becoming an "innovation partner" at Applied's new research and development hub in Silicon Valley, known as the EPIC Center.
In that statement, Raja said advanced packaging had become a materials engineering challenge rather than a back-end assembly step.
Besi's CEO Richard Blickman called joining the centre "a natural next step".
Why not a takeover?
Applied's promise to stop at 20% also keeps it well clear of a key threshold. Under Dutch takeover rules, an investor that crosses 30% of a listed company’s voting rights must make an offer for the whole company.
A full deal would also face scrutiny in Beijing.
Both companies sell heavily into China, giving its competition regulator a say over any potential merger.
Roughly 30% of Applied's 2025 revenue came from China, while Besi runs a factory in the Chinese city of Leshan, in Sichuan province.
Applied has been in a similar situation before. In 2021, it abandoned a deal to buy Japanese chip equipment maker Kokusai Electric when Chinese approval failed to arrive in time.
Applied's move also comes after a steep slide in Besi’s share price.
The stock has lost about half its value since peaking at €317 in June, caught up in a wider sell-off in chip stocks.
