Infineon to invest €1.1 billion in Austria chip site

Oct 27 (Reuters) - German chip manufacturer Infineon is investing €1.1 billion ($1.23 billion) in an Austrian site to expand production of power semiconductors for data centres, it said on Tuesday.

• The company plans to build the world's first plant at its site in Villach for the mass production of gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors based on 300-millimetre-diametre wafers.

• "This paves the way for the widespread use of gallium nitride in a wide range of key applications in fields such as artificial intelligence, energy infrastructure, electric mobility and robotics," CEO Jochen Hanebeck said in a statement.

• 300-millimetre wafers can hold 2.3 times as many chips as the most commonly used 200-millimetre version.

• Infineon's share price, which has fallen around 40% since the middle of June, was up nearly 1% in early Frankfurt trading.

($1 = 0.8946 euros)

(Reporting by Danny Callaghan and Hakan Ersen, Editing by Friederike Heine)