Rudi De Winter

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2025 finalist, Belgium
CEO of X-FAB

Rudi De Winter is pioneering semiconductor innovation.

Semiconductors form the cornerstone of contemporary life, appearing not only in consumer electronics but also in specialty machinery and devices. In 1992, Rudi De Winter cofounded X-FAB with Roland Duchâtelet and Françoise Chombar to provide specialized chip manufacturing for companies that design hardware but lack the resources for their own fabrication facilities.

At the time, a growing number of innovative companies needed semiconductor specialty processing but couldn’t afford their own wafer factory. X-FAB was envisioned as an innovation partner, with the X representing a “factory for anybody” that could flawlessly execute industrializing semiconductor innovations. X-FAB has since become a crucial partner for over 400 companies in the automotive, medical and industrial sectors. It contributes to solutions that make cars safer and more efficient, make health care more effective, and render cities and factories smarter. 

As semiconductor manufacturing is very capital-intensive, Rudi and his cofounders opted to acquire existing facilities that previously had been used to produce memory chips. X-FAB gave these spaces a second life by transforming them into specialty semiconductor factories. They focused on developing and installing integrated circuit technologies to interface with and digitize our analog world. With operations spanning six factories across three continents and a workforce of approximately 4,500, X-FAB exemplifies how targeted innovation in semiconductor processing can drive significant transformation.