BelGaN

BelGaN made gallium nitride power chips in Oudenaarde, East Flanders, on a fab Chinese investors bought from ON Semiconductor for EUR 100 million in February 2022. The plant went bankrupt in July 2024 with more than 400 jobs lost.

In September 2026 Belgian prosecutors confirmed that a senior BelGaN researcher had been in custody since May, accused of passing gallium nitride production secrets to a Chinese company he allegedly directed at the same time. Belgium's state security service treats the case as an example of the mirror company pattern, where a buyer replicates a European firm's technology in China and then walks away from the original.