Kurt Sievers, president and CEO of NXP Semiconductors, discussed in an interview with CaleaEuropeana.ro about NXP’s unique hardware and software portfolio, as well as the important achievements of NXP Romania through its two centers in Bucharest and Sibiu. Kurt Sievers visited Romania from April 1-2 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of NXP Romania.
Read the full interview:
CaleaEuropeana.ro: NXP has a strong presence in Romania through its centers in Bucharest and Sibiu, one of Europe’s most important software and hardware development hubs. What are NXP’s most significant achievements in Romania so far, and how do you evaluate the impact of this presence on the company’s global operations?
Kurt Sievers: NXP Romania is the company’s largest automotive software hub. It also delivers significant contributions to NXP’s Industrial and IoT domains. Our Romanian team’s headcount has grown from 550 to approximately 1,100 over the past five years. We have also doubled the size of our local ecosystem. We enjoy co-location with several key partners and customers in Romania, including Continental: the biggest employer in Romania in our industry. Partners of ours in other EU projects like ESMC joint venture fab partner Bosch also have a presence here.
NXP Romania teams develop key software solutions, critical for the success of NXP. The software and solutions we develop in Romania are implemented across various domains of the Software Defined Vehicle, including: Networking, Electrification, ADAS Radar, Vehicle Compute, all aligned to centralized car architecture. Our Romanian team also develops software and solutions for the IoT and Industrial markets including Building & Home Automation, Factory automation, Healthcare, and Smart Home Appliances.
We also have a significant presence in top universities across the country, influencing their curricula to keep pace with rapid technology advancements. Our Romanian university partnerships create opportunities for students and researchers to access our cutting-edge technology in NXP-equipped laboratories, and enable an innovative environment through the academic competitions like the NXP Cup and hackathons, hands-on experience in Innovation Labs, a range of internships, and more.
CaleaEuropeana.ro: What concrete plans do you have for expanding NXP’s R&D investments in Romania over the coming years?
Kurt Sievers: Given the increasing complexity, intelligence, and interconnected nature of edge devices, the need for software will continue to grow. Therefore we see ongoing potential for growth here.
Romania is also a hub where NXP is strengthening our European R&D efforts through IPCEI grants. Last year NXP Romania signed a SENTHICOM IPCEI financing contract that will fund the efforts of ~300 engineers for 5.5 years. We have ambitious plans to expand our contribution to the Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) which aims to bolster Europe’s semiconductor industry by fostering collaboration between the EU, member states, and the private sector. NXP was also a big contributor to EU Projects Tristan and Isolde, which furthered an open RISC-V processing ecosystem in Europe.
What is Romania’s strategic position within NXP’s global ecosystem, especially considering that Europe is undergoing rapid digital transformation and accelerated development in the semiconductor and critical technology industries?
Kurt Sievers: NXP is investing significantly in digital transformation and NXP Romania is playing a leading role in moving our global organization to adapt and deploy digital transformation practices like GenAI, which is helping to drive efficiency and accelerate project execution.
CaleaEuropeana.ro: Romania is in the process of joining the OECD and actively participates in European initiatives concerning digital transformation and technological security. How does NXP perceive the evolution of the European market within the current geopolitical context, and how is this influencing the company’s investment decisions in the region?
Kurt Sievers: While NXP has a global footprint with operations in more than 30 countries, we are a European headquartered company with a very strong presence in Europe. Together with NXP sites in Austria, Czechia, France, Germany and The Netherlands, NXP Romania is contributing to European semiconductor sovereignty. Our team here is creating solutions for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs) through advanced R&D including processor software support (runtime software and tools) in areas of firmware, virtualization, operating systems (real-time or Linux), drivers, middleware, and integration platforms. Many of the 30 countries in which we operate are already members of OECD, so we view it as a welcome and natural development to have Romania join this intergovernmental organization.
CaleaEuropeana.ro: NXP is one of the global leaders in supplying semiconductors for the automotive industry. What role do your Romanian operations play in this critical segment, and how do they contribute to the development of advanced technologies for connected and autonomous vehicles?
Kurt Sievers: Software will continue to play a crucial role in the semiconductor industry, and NXP is advancing the global automotive market by providing scalable system solutions that address customer needs. Automakers all around the world are making the shift to software defined, and increasingly electrified vehicles. This is the most significant transformation to occur in the automotive industry since the invention of the automobile over 100 years ago, and our team here in Romania is right at the center of making this historic transformation possible.
CaleaEuropeana.ro: What are the main global challenges and opportunities facing NXP today, especially given the international technological and economic competition, and how do you plan to consolidate your global position in the upcoming years?
Kurt Sievers: We are taking transformative steps in our business to become the leading provider of intelligent edge systems in automotive and industrial IoT. According to McKinsey, the global semiconductor market will become a $1.3 trillion opportunity by 2030. And if you look over the past years, growth has been driven by long waves of mega applications. Between 2000-2010 compute was the name of the game. Intel was the winner. Between 2010 and 2020, there was the age of mobile, smartphones, of tablets, companies like Qualcomm and Broadcom really emerged strongly through the period. And since then, it is for sure cloud computing, AI, generative AI and the cloud with NVIDIA, the absolute rising star.
We think from here, the next big wave is, which will actually benefit from the artificial intelligence, from all the cloud computing, all of these edge applications be it in the home, be it building automation, be it factory automation, be it the car as the ultimate edge device. They’re all connected to the cloud and will benefit from the success the cloud is currently scoring.
What comes next and where NXP is going to be strong is what we call “anticipate and automate.” The idea is technology will know what you need next. And then, technology is going to automate the delivery of that. And that is about all the help we are getting from robotic lawnmowers, from eventually autonomous cars. All of that is about anticipating what is next and then delivering it in an automated fashion. And these are all edge applications.
We have organized our business to exploit this growth opportunity whether it is in automotive, factory automation, building automation, the smart home, and healthcare. It is about automation of tasks. It is about trust, which these applications have to provide. And trust comes with cybersecurity and functional safety and this is about efficiency increases. We are assembling a unique hardware and software portfolio to attack this market opportunity in a way our competitors cannot match.
