The Biden administration plans to give Micron up to $6.1 billion in grants to help build semiconductor factories in New York and Idaho, and this latest multibillion-dollar grant will help the nation build critical semiconductor production. The purpose is to strengthen the
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, announced the grant Thursday, saying the “huge” investment will help the company build two new chip manufacturing plants in New York by the end of the decade. He said he was deaf. Construction in Idaho.
More than a year ago, Micron announced plans to expand its manufacturing footprint in the United States. In September 2022, the company announced that it would invest $15 billion to build a new U.S. memory chip factory in its hometown of Boise, Idaho, the first in 20 years. A month later, Micron announced it would build a huge manufacturing complex near Syracuse, New York, pledging to begin the $20 billion project by the end of 2010 and spend up to $100 billion over the next two decades. did. The complex could eventually include up to four new manufacturing plants.
A senior Biden administration official acknowledged the award, saying it would lead to the creation of thousands of jobs. The investment is expected to create approximately 50,000 jobs, including approximately 9,000 direct jobs at the plant, company officials said.
The announcement is the latest award given to chipmakers by federal regulators in recent weeks. The funding will be used by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in 2022 to re-establish the United States as a leader in producing semiconductors, the fundamental components that power everything from cell phones and supercomputers to cars and weapons systems. It comes from the CHIPS Act that was passed. The Commerce Department has set aside $39 billion and distributed several grants to encourage chipmakers to build and expand facilities in the United States.
The initiative aims to strengthen domestic semiconductor supply. Semiconductors were invented in America, but manufacturing has largely moved overseas. Currently, only about 10 percent of the world's semiconductors are manufactured in the United States.
Micron's award brings the total amount of announced grants to more than $29 billion. On Monday, US authorities awarded Samsung up to $6.4 billion in subsidies. Other major chipmakers have also won awards recently, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Intel. GlobalFoundries, Microchip Technology and BAE Systems were the recipients of his first three awards.
Schumer, who helped rally Congress to pass the CHIPS Act, said Micron's award will help ensure that “the United States is no longer dependent on other countries for all kinds of critical chips.” He said Micron has been asking for years to receive a portion of the federal grant money.
“I've always lobbied hard for New York's advantage, and I've talked with the administration many times about how important Micron is to the nation as a whole,” Schumer said in an interview. “But frankly, my support for chips extends across the country.”
Schumer said the award will help the country ramp up production of critical memory chips, on which it is “increasingly reliant.”
Micron declined to comment, citing confidentiality requirements related to CHIPS Act grants.
Boise-based Micron is the last remaining U.S. supplier of chips called dynamic random access memory, or DRAM. These components play an important role in computers and smartphones, acting like a scratchpad to temporarily store data that needs to be retrieved frequently. Micron also has a major sideline in flash memory, a new type of chip that stores data more permanently.
The DRAM business was a major global battleground in the 1980s and 1990s, as Japanese and later Korean companies used their manufacturing power to drive down prices and squeeze competitors. Much larger American companies, including Intel and Texas Instruments, have exited the business.
As the industry consolidated into just three large companies, Micron, a much smaller company, managed to hold on. South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix rank first and second in memory sales, respectively. All three companies suffered from severe pricing pressure last year, although reduced competition has helped to cushion the industry to some extent.
As new applications require larger amounts of data and faster access to that data, DRAM and flash memory have become the mainstay of computers in data centers. In the latest issue, manufacturers of specialized chips for artificial intelligence, such as Nvidia, rely on a technology called high-bandwidth memory, which bundles multiple stacks of his DRAM chips in a package along with a processor that performs calculations. .
Micron operates primarily from offices in San Jose, California, but the majority of its manufacturing occurs in Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore. Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Mehrotra has spearheaded efforts to significantly expand its U.S. manufacturing footprint and secure government subsidies for that expansion.
But Mehrotra reiterated that the timing of such spending closely tracks supply and demand conditions in the memory market and also reflects the company's success in obtaining U.S. subsidies.
Schumer said Micron also plans to apply for federal tax credits that could cover 25% of the cost of building the factory and equipping it with production equipment.
