US President Joe Biden’s administration yesterday finalized up to US$6.2 billion in funding for Micron Technology Inc, firming up a deal to boost domestic semiconductor production before Donald Trump returns to the White House.
The Biden administration has been working to green-light agreements with firms in the chipmaking supply chain over recent months, seeking to cement parts of his legacy before the government administration changes.
Once a deal is finalized, funds can start heading to companies when they hit certain milestones.
Photo: Qilai Shen, Bloomberg
The Micron investment helps to bring development and production of advanced memory semiconductor technology to US shores, US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said.
This “is crucial for safeguarding our leadership on artificial intelligence and protecting our economic and national security,” she added in a statement.
The United States has been trying to reduce its dependence on China and other countries for semiconductors.
The latest funding comes under the CHIPS and Science Act, a major law passed during Biden’s term aimed at strengthening the US semiconductor industry.
The Micron deal in particular supports the company’s two-decade plan to invest some US$100 billion in New York and US$25 billion in Idaho, the US Department of Commerce said.
This should create some 20,000 jobs and “help the US grow its share of advanced memory manufacturing from less than two percent today to approximately 10 percent by 2035,” the department added.
Apart from the efforts in New York and Idaho, the commerce department also signed a preliminary agreement with Micron for up to US$275 million in proposed funding to expand and modernize its facility in Virginia.
“As the only US-based manufacturer of memory, Micron is uniquely positioned to bring leading-edge memory manufacturing to the US,” Micron president Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.
The US used to make nearly 40 percent of the world’s chips but this proportion is now around 10 percent, with none being the most advanced chips.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS