It looks like President Biden’s CHIPS Act is starting to pay off. Samsung is planning on doubling its investment in Texas, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. This will bring the total investment in the state’s chip-manufacturing sector to $44 billion, as Samsung already spent nearly $20 billion to build a factory back in 2021.
The ambitious expansion will reportedly take the form of a new chip manufacturing facility, a packaging site and a research and development space. It’ll all be located in or near Taylor, Texas, as that’s where the pre-existing semiconductor facility was built. The current manufacturing hub isn’t operational yet, but will begin building “crucial logic chips” later this year. For the geographically challenged, Taylor is around a 40 minute drive from Austin.
If this actually happens, it’ll be a huge win for the Biden administration. One of the main goals of the CHIPS Act, after all, is to lure global chipmakers to build on US soil. To that end, Washington plans on awarding more than $6 billion to Samsung as further incentive to keep things running in the good ole USA.
The CHIPS Act has allowed the federal government to award funding and offer loans to many tech companies to encourage domestic spending. Back in February, the multinational semiconductor company GlobalFoundries received a grant of $1.5 billion to help pay for a major US expansion, in addition to a $1.6 billion loan. It plans on building a new fabrication facility in Malta, New York, which will handle the manufacture of chips for the automotive, aerospace, defense and AI industries.
More recently, Intel received the largest CHIPS grant to date, snagging up to $8.5 billion to continue various US-based operations. The current plan is for Intel to use that money to manufacture plants that make leading-edge semiconductor chips meant for use in AI and other advanced applications. The company’s building two new fabrication facilities in Arizona and two in Ohio. Additionally, it’s going to use the money to modernize two pre-existing fabs in New Mexico and expand one location in Oregon. All told, Intel is going to invest $100 billion in US-based chip manufacturing. The various projects are expected to create 20,000 construction and 10,000 manufacturing jobs.
The Biden administration signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law back in 2022 to foster domestic semiconductor research and manufacturing and to lessen America’s reliance on Chinese suppliers. It sets aside $52 billion in tax credits and funding for firms to expand stateside production.
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