Although Croatia is not known as a leader in the semiconductor industry, there are a number of SMEs in Croatia that use semiconductor components and standard off-the-shelf components for the development of electronic systems. Almost none of them use their own chip design to advance their products. At the same time, Croatia has a very solid education in basic sciences (mathematics, physics and engineering) and has gained a new and very strong education in chip design in the last ten years. The CROCCS (Croatian Competence Centre for Semiconductors) project will create and support the education – design – processing – characterization chain to boost the confidence of SMEs that the chip design activities in Croatia are feasible by establishing a link between universities and SMEs by jointly designing integrated circuits (chips) in a pre-competitive phase and by characterizing the processed chips. The CROCCS consortium will support skills development, provide users with access to the European design platform and pilot lines, link university students and SMEs in particular to increase the interest of both sides in chip design, leverage existing local competencies and hardware for the characterization of chips and electronic systems in general, and build an advanced chip characterization facility that will primarily support SMEs, but also other institutions, by offering access to advanced measurement equipment that SMEs could not normally afford. CROCCS aims to attract SMEs to the field of chip design, educate more students, as well as reskill and upskill engineers in this field, create more jobs in Croatia in analogue, digital and mixed-signal chip design, and finally closely link universities and companies to enable greater technology transfer to industry.