Just weeks after Congress authorized $52 billion in additional funding to increase domestic chip production, Micron said on Thursday that it will spend $15 billion to develop a new semiconductor facility in Idaho.
The CHIPS and Science Act, which the Biden administration just authorized, has been the target of a number of multibillion-dollar proposals, the latest of which was announced by Micron. Micron said last month that it will utilize the extra subsidies provided by the legislation to spend $40 billion in US memory fabs by 2030, adding an estimated 40,000 new jobs. Over the next eight years, the new Boise factory is anticipated to generate 17,000 new employment, including 2,000 Micron employees.
Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, expressed gratitude to the Biden administration for completing the bipartisan semiconductors legislation in a statement on Thursday. According to Mehrotra, “Our new state-of-the-art memory fabrication fab will support US technological leadership, providing a trustworthy domestic supply of semiconductors that is important to economic and national security.”
In a statement on Thursday, President Joe Biden hailed Micron’s most recent investment as “another significant victory for America.”
But it wasn’t apparent until last month if the CHIPS and Science Act would pass this year until it finally did. Intel postponed the groundbreaking for a new $20 billion chip factory in Ohio while the financing for it stagnated in Congress, and even went so far as to propose to the Biden administration taking over an abandoned Chinese facility rather than waiting for the funding’s approval. The New York Times claims that these advertisements terrified legislators and caused them to move more quickly to pass the measure.
The Columbus Dispatch stated that the president will attend a new groundbreaking for Intel’s factory this month shortly after Biden signed the legislation into law. It would need 7,000 employees to construct and, according to the business, would be the “biggest silicon production facility on the globe.”
Biden issued an executive order last week to begin distributing the billions in subsidies to businesses like Micron and Intel. Although a new interagency committee was created by Biden’s order to monitor the implementation, it is still unknown when the Commerce Department would formally release the additional cash.
The federal government has spent billions in generating domestic IT and manufacturing employment via Biden administration objectives including the CHIPs program and the bipartisan infrastructure package.
As a direct consequence of my economic strategy, First Solar, Toyota, Honda, and Corning have all made significant announcements this week about new investments and employment, Biden stated on Thursday. We will manufacture EVs, electronics, fiber optics, and other essential components in America in the future, and our economy will be developed from the center out and from the bottom up.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm made $3.1 billion in funds available to US businesses in April to assist increase the use of electric vehicles. An energy start-up by the name of Sparkz revealed plans to construct a new battery facility in northern West Virginia earlier this week.