Japan’s Chip Startup Is Right to Shoot for the Moon

Could a little league baseball team win the World Series in five years? Japan’s state-backed chip startup Rapidus has a similarly long-shot ambition. In a country that currently produces 40 nanometer semiconductors, the two-year-old venture has the goal of leapfrogging generations of innovation and producing bleeding-edge 2 nanometer chips in 2027.

It would be easy to use a collection of data points to string together an argument that its efforts are preposterous. But in shooting for the moon, Rapidus has reinvigorated Japan’s public and private sectors to cooperate in a way not seen for generations — and over a strategically critical national security goal. This makes the startup’s success a matter of collective national pride, and a reason to be bullish that it can pull it off.