Tower Semiconductor Brand Guidelines: The Migdal Haemek Analog Foundry Once Called TowerJazz

A National Semiconductor fab in Migdal Haemek.

Tower Semiconductor began in 1993 with a single factory. The company says it was founded with the acquisition of National Semiconductor’s 150-millimetre wafer fab in Migdal Haemek, Israel, and that it became a public company a year later, in 1994, with its shares traded on Nasdaq under the ticker TSEM. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange listing, under the same ticker, followed in 2001, according to the company’s own timeline; English Wikipedia lists Tower as a component of the TA-35 index.

Growth came first at home. A second, 200-millimetre factory, Fab 2, was built next to the first in Migdal Haemek: English Wikipedia dates its construction to January 2001, while the company’s timeline marks the fab in 2004. The company also says it opened a worldwide design centre in Netanya in 2000.

The larger step was abroad. In September 2008 Tower acquired Jazz Semiconductor, English Wikipedia says, in what the company describes as a stock-for-stock merger. Jazz had been formed in 2002 and had inherited a 200-millimetre fab in Newport Beach, California, once run by Rockwell Semiconductor; it became Tower’s Fab 3. In November 2009 the combined business took the name TowerJazz.

Japan followed. English Wikipedia records that TowerJazz bought Micron Technology’s fab in Nishiwaki, Hyogo, in June 2011, and later stopped operations there as it reorganised its Japanese business. In April 2014 it formed a new Japanese company with Panasonic, TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co., or TPSCo, which brought three Japanese fabs, the company says. In 2016 it bought Maxim Integrated’s 200-millimetre fab in San Antonio, Texas.

Analog processes, many fabs.

Tower makes integrated circuits for other semiconductor companies using specialty processes, English Wikipedia says, and it presents itself as a specialist in analog technology; its website calls it “the leading foundry of high value analog semiconductor solutions,” a description that is the company’s own. English Wikipedia lists its process families, among them silicon-germanium (SiGe) and BiCMOS, silicon photonics, silicon-on-insulator, mixed-signal and RF CMOS. The same article adds CMOS image sensors, non-imaging sensors, power management (BCD), non-volatile memory and MEMS.

Its manufacturing map is spread across three regions. The company’s manufacturing page lists 150- and 200-millimetre lines in Migdal Haemek; 200-millimetre fabs in Newport Beach and San Antonio; and two fabs in Japan’s Hokuriku region, at Tonami (200 millimetres) and Uozu (300 millimetres, with 65- and 45-nanometre processes). The Japanese fabs belong to TPSCo, which the company says is now 51% owned by Tower and 49% by Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan.

Two further sites are shared. In June 2021 Tower and STMicroelectronics announced that Tower would join ST’s 300-millimetre fab at Agrate Brianza, near Milan, which the company lists for 65-nanometre RF SOI. And in September 2023 Tower and Intel Foundry Services agreed that Intel would provide 300-millimetre capacity at its Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, where Intel would run Tower’s 65-nanometre power-management BCD flows among others, Globes reported on 5 September 2023; Tower’s chief executive said full process qualification was planned for 2024. The company now lists a New Mexico 300-millimetre line for power BCD and RF analog work.

Design and documentation.

Contract chip makers sell a service rather than a product with their own name on it. The chips they make leave the plant under their customers’ names, so a foundry’s identity has to be built from the things it can show: the wafer, the cleanroom, the fab and the people who run it.

The wafer is the usual starting point. Foundry photographs often show a finished wafer held up to the light, its grid of chips throwing back a rainbow sheen, or a stack of wafers in a carrier ready for the next step. Close-ups of patterned silicon give a company a recognisable image without revealing any customer’s design.

Inside the fab, the pictures follow a familiar pattern: engineers in full-body cleanroom suits, often called bunny suits, standing at tools under the yellow light used in lithography areas; long, bright corridors lined with equipment; and overhead transport systems carrying wafer pods along tracks in the ceiling. From outside, aerial shots of fab campuses, with their long, low buildings and utility plants, stand in for scale and capacity.

Foundries also present themselves at trade shows and conferences, such as the SEMICON exhibitions held in several regions, as well as through their own technology events for customers. Their names usually travel as abbreviations or short forms, and their written materials lean on process names, node figures and fab locations. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it, where it makes wafers — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

TowerJazz becomes Tower again.

The current identity dates from 2020. On 27 February that year TowerJazz announced a new brand identity to launch on 1 March 2020, covering its brand name, vision, mission, values, logo, tagline, website and “graphic design approach.” The brand name became Tower Semiconductor for the whole group and all its subsidiaries, and the web address became towersemi.com. The company said the change was meant to reflect its global presence and its focus on analog work; its chief executive described the values behind it as partnership, impact, leadership and innovation, with excellence at the core. Its website today carries the line “Where Analog and Value Meet” and a branding page that offers the logo for download and asks users to follow the company’s branding guidelines.

The years since have included a takeover that did not happen. On 15 February 2022 Intel and Tower announced a definitive agreement for Intel to acquire Tower, with Intel describing it as “a leading foundry for analog semiconductor solutions” that would help scale Intel Foundry Services. On 16 August 2023 Tower announced that the two companies had agreed to end the merger agreement after its 15 August outside date had passed without any indication on a required regulatory approval; Globes reported that Intel cancelled the deal after failing to gain the necessary approvals in China. The New Mexico capacity agreement with Intel followed within weeks. Tower’s shares still trade on Nasdaq and in Tel Aviv under the TSEM ticker, and its headquarters remain in Migdal Haemek. In February 2026, English Wikipedia notes, it announced a silicon photonics partnership with the Canadian quantum computing company Xanadu.

For a design guide, Tower Semiconductor shows how a contract maker can fold a merger-era double name back into a single, plainer one. Compare Intel, which once agreed to buy it, and GlobalFoundries, another foundry with fabs on several continents. For this guide we use navy, grey and a copper accent with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Tower Semiconductor’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.