The outgoing US government has accelerated the resolution of issues affecting the development of the local semiconductor industry, so by the end of this week, guarantees for subsidies for the construction of chip production plants in the country were provided to three companies at once: Samsung Electronics, Texas Instruments and Amkor.
Image Source: Samsung Electronics
The total amount of subsidies under the 2022 Chips Act, one of the Biden administration’s major legislative initiatives released yesterday, reaches $6.75 billion, with the largest recipient being South Korean company Samsung Electronics, which is building a contract chip manufacturing facility in Taylor, Texas. Initially, this manufacturer applied for $6.4 billion in subsidies, but a much smaller amount was finally agreed upon – $4.745 billion. According to Reuters, such a reduction is due to Samsung’s own decision to cut the amount of its investment in the Texas project. More significant investments are not justified at the moment, as can be understood from the comments of Samsung representatives.
In April, it was reported that Samsung would spend about $45 billion by 2030 to build two chip plants, a research center and a chip packaging line, which would be located in Texas. Now, according to American officials, Samsung is going to allocate no more than $37 billion for these purposes.
Texas Instruments will receive $1.61 billion to expand its production in the US, and Amkor Technology will receive $407 million, which will cover about a fifth of the $2 billion it plans to spend on building the largest US chip testing and packaging facility in Arizona. . Texas Instruments plans to spend more than $18 billion through 2029 to build two plants in Texas and one in Utah that will employ 2,000 people. Texas businesses will receive $900 million in subsidies from the US government, and a Utah business will receive $700 million.
The outgoing week for the US Department of Commerce was the most productive in terms of allocating subsidies under the “Chip Act” in monetary terms, as a result of which $33 billion were distributed out of the $36 billion that will be allocated to non-repayable subsidies to companies building chip production plants in the United States . As the head of the department, Gina Raimondo, emphasized, the country is now the only one in the world on whose territory enterprises of five leading chip manufacturers will be located.