Key Takeaways
- Samsung Electronics will get up to $6.4 billion in CHIPS and Science Act funding from the Biden administration to expand its manufacturing facilities in Texas.
- Samsung is the latest to receive funding from the semiconductor-focused funding program, joining companies like Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
- The Biden administration has said it wants to make the U.S. a leader in the semiconductor manufacturing industry after much of the industry has gone overseas in recent years.
Samsung Electronics and the U.S. government announced an agreement Monday that would net Samsung up to $6.4 billion in CHIPS and Science Act funding to expand its facilities in Texas.
The expansion of the Texas factories will bring Samsung’s investment in central Texas to over $40 billion by the time the factories are completed and “cement central Texas’s role as a state-of-the-art semiconductor ecosystem,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.
The Commerce Department estimated in a statement that the construction and operation of the factories will create about 21,500 jobs, and said the grant includes about $40 million in funding to train local workers to operate the factories.
“Proposed CHIPS investments like the ones we are announcing today will be a catalyst for continued private sector investments to help secure the long-term stability we need to put America at the beginning of our semiconductor supply chain and to safeguard a strong resilient ecosystem here at home,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement. “The chips that Samsung will be making in Texas are important components to our most advanced technologies, from artificial intelligence to high-performance computing and 5G communications.”
Through the agreement, Samsung will expand its facilities in Austin, where it has manufactured chips since 1996, as well as build a number of new factories in Taylor, Texas, where Samsung will manufacture and package advanced semiconductors.
The Biden administration has said since the CHIPS and Science Act was first proposed that they want to make the U.S. a leader in the semiconductor industry both for national security reasons, as well as addressing vulnerabilities in the supply chain that were exposed by the pandemic. Semiconductors are used to make dozens of products, from smartphones to cars and kitchen appliances.
The South Korean electronics company joins Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM), which last week announced plans to build a third factory at its Arizona location with up to $6.6 billion in CHIPS funding, along with Intel (INTC) and GlobalFoundries (GFS), which received grants of $8.5 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively, to expand or build new facilities across a number of states earlier this year.