Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement.
The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said.
The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far.
Photo: An Rong Xu, Bloomberg
According to TSMC, the first Arizona fab is scheduled to start mass production using sophisticated 4-nanometer process technology in the first half of next year, while the second fab is to begin volume production using 3nm and 2nm process technology in 2028.
TSMC has also unveiled plans to build a third fab there using the 2nm process or more advanced technology with overall investments above US$65 billion in Arizona.
The chipmaker also in February launched a fab in Kumamoto, Japan and announced plans for a second, as part of an estimated US$20 billion investment. In Europe, it broke ground on a 12-inch wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, last month.
However, TSMC said earlier yesterday that it has no new concrete overseas expansion plans, following news reports that its top executives recently held talks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
While not addressing the UAE rumors directly, TSMC told CNA that it was always open to constructive discussions on promoting the development of the semiconductor industry, adding it remained focused on its current global projects.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that top TSMC executives recently visited the UAE to discuss building a plant cluster similar in scale to the chipmaker’s largest and most advanced facilities in Taiwan.
According to the Journal, the UAE has also courted chipmaking investment from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.
Under the initial discussions, the investment plans of TSMC and Samsung would be funded by the UAE with the aim of raising global chip production and capping soaring prices without hurting chipmakers’ bottom lines, the Journal said, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Commenting on the report, Ray Yang (楊瑞臨), an international strategy development consulting director at the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), said that he suspected speculation arose after TSMC sent its marketing personnel to the UAE.
“But, TSMC investing in the UAE is a thing which has not even begun to take shape,” Yang said.
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