Applied Materials Targets Nearly 20% Stake in Besi to Deepen Chip Partnership
Key Facts
Applied Materials announced on October 26, 2026, an agreement to buy additional shares in Dutch company Besi, lifting its ownership to about 20% of outstanding shares once the purchase is completed. The company said the deal is part of its investment in its partner in advanced chip-packaging equipment. The target percentage does not mean the purchase has been completed; the agreement says delivery of the shares is subject to the expiration or termination of the U.S. regulatory waiting period. The announcement therefore combines a deeper investment presence with an expansion of an existing industrial collaboration. Reuters data show Applied has been Besi’s largest shareholder since buying an initial stake in 2025.
The deal will be executed through an accelerated share purchase agreement, with delivery subject to the waiting period under the U.S. Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust law. The company did not specify a date for completing the share transfer in its announcement, saying only that delivery would follow the expiration or termination of the period. Applied’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission confirms that the agreement was made on October 26 and that its ownership will reach about 20% after the purchase. The company also said it does not intend to increase its investment materially beyond that level and is not seeking a seat on Besi’s board. These stated limits set a clear ceiling on the nature of the investment, while its completion remains tied to the regulatory process.
The companies began collaborating in 2020 by establishing a joint center of excellence for hybrid bonding at Applied’s advanced packaging development center in Singapore. Applied says this work led to its Kinetix system, which it described as the first complete die-to-wafer hybrid bonding system. On October 1, 2026, the companies announced an expansion of their partnership, with Besi joining Applied’s EPIC center as an innovation partner. Applied said the expanded collaboration will give customers earlier access to joint solutions spanning wafer-level hybrid bonding to panel-level integration. This reflects a shift from developing a specific technology to coordinating broader stages of the advanced packaging process.
The announced areas of work include expanding 3D integrated circuits, integrating logic and memory, and developing thermocompression bonding. The partnership announcement also cited photonics-enabled interconnect applications, including co-packaged optics, to support the expansion of AI systems. Applied’s president of the Semiconductor Products Group said hybrid bonding and next-generation interconnect structures are becoming increasingly important enablers of energy efficiency and AI computing performance. The companies say their joint solutions are intended to support AI system architectures by connecting chips within a package. The collaboration focuses on improving connections between computing and memory components while expanding assembly from wafer to panel level.
The investment announcement followed the partnership expansion disclosed by the companies in early October. Applied had owned 9% of Besi since its initial investment in April 2025, Reuters reported. Reuters described the U.S. company as Besi’s largest shareholder since that investment. In trading on October 26, Applied shares rose 2.74% and Besi shares gained 0.86% at the time Reuters published its coverage. The latest closing price for the U.S. stock in EL7 data was $377.24 on October 23, before the agreement was announced. That price does not measure the stock’s movement after the announcement, and the available evidence did not include a verified figure for the stock’s intraday high on October 23.
Applied investors are looking ahead to the company’s fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 results, which it has scheduled for November 12, 2026. The date comes weeks after the Besi agreement was announced, giving the company an opportunity to present its next financial results amid an expanded investment and partnership in advanced packaging. The results announcement did not link its timing to further details about completion of the share purchase. The next step in the deal remains subject to the expiration or termination of the U.S. statutory waiting period under the agreement’s terms. The company said it does not intend to exceed a stake of about 20% or seek board representation at Besi.