Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) aims to build a second chipmaking plant in Arizona, after it committed to building a US$12 billion complex in the state, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the plans.
The world’s largest contract chipmaker would announce its intention to establish another facility north of Phoenix, adjacent to the factory under construction, the newspaper reported.
The new investment should be similar to the first project’s, it added.
Photo: Lam Yik Fei, Bloomberg
Representatives for the company did not respond to requests for comment.
The administration of US President Joe Biden is trying to attract investments in US chipmaking, part of efforts to counter China’s ambitions and secure components vital to US national security. That effort accelerated after widespread shortages that began in late 2020 and last year drove home how chips were central to the production of everything from vehicles to smartphones.
Washington, which is dangling incentives of about US$50 billion for local projects, has hailed TSMC’s Arizona expansion as a triumph in endeavors to bring advanced chipmaking to the US.
The Taiwanese company has said that it costs much more to produce semiconductors in the US, although higher expenses are manageable with state support.
TSMC, whose production sites are mostly in Taiwan, has started to diversify over the past few years to help meet demand in major countries seeking to bolster domestic semiconductor production. It joins rivals, including Samsung Electronics Co, which is establishing a US$17 billion fab in Texas.
TSMC is building a US$7 billion facility in Japan and is also in early talks with the German government about potentially establishing a plant in the country.
On Tuesday, TSMC’s board of directors approved a budget of US$5.71 billion, with the vast majority to be spent on production involving specialty and advanced manufacturing processes.
TSMC said advanced manufacturing processes would receive about 70 to 80 percent of the funding, while 10 to 20 percent would be spent on specialty processes, with the remaining about 10 percent earmarked for advanced packaging and testing, as well as photomasking development.
TSMC last month said it would cut its capital expenditure for this year to about US$36 billion from the lower end of a range from US$40 billion to US$44 billion in the previous capital spending plan, citing short-term market uncertainty.
The global semiconductor industry is undergoing inventory adjustments at a time when major central banks have raised key interest rates to fight fast-growing inflation, which has hurt demand.
Additional reporting by CNA
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS