The fab was inaugurated by French president Jacques Chirac, on February 27, 2003. It includes a R&D center which focuses on developing new nanometric technology processes for 90 nm to 32 nm scale using wafers and it was developed for "The Crolles 2 Alliance". This alliance of STMicroelectronics, TSMC, NXP Semiconductors (formerly Philips semiconductor) and Freescale (formerly Motorola semiconductor) partnered in 2002 to develop the facility and to work together on process development. The technologies developed at the facility were also used by global semiconductor foundry TSMC of Taiwan, allowing TSMC to build the products developed in Crolles on behalf of the Alliance partners who required such foundry capacity.