Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and GlobalFoundries Inc have finished negotiating binding agreements for billions of dollars in grants and loans to support US factories, sources familiar with the matter said.
The deals, announced as tentative agreements earlier this year, come as US President Joe Biden’s administration races to get CHIPS and Science Act money out the door before the end of its term in January.
It is unclear when the agreements would officially be signed and the incentives unveiled, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are private.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
The award amounts are roughly in line with the preliminary agreements, the sources said.
TSMC’s package announced in April includes US$6.6 billion in grants and as much as US$5 billion in loans to support the construction of three semiconductor factories in Phoenix. GlobalFoundries’ agreement from February is for US$1.5 billion in grants and as much as US$1.6 billion in loans to support a new plant in New York state, as well as expansions of existing facilities there and in Vermont.
TSMC, GlobalFoundries and the US Department of Commerce declined to comment.
The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in grants — plus billions more in loans and 25 percent tax credits — to revitalize US semiconductor manufacturing after decades of production shifting to Asia. It has generated 10 times that amount in promised private investment, including factories for advanced chips, older-generation semiconductors and supply chain components.
More than 20 companies are in line to win US government funding, and they have spent months undergoing a due diligence process after negotiating preliminary accords. There is also almost US$3 billion left to divvy up into preliminary agreements.
That means it is extremely likely that some of the funding would be finalized under the leadership of Donald Trump, who would take the White House in January.
Once contracts are signed, money would be disbursed in tranches based on project-specific milestones.
Industry officials are anxious to get things squared away as quickly as possible, to allow money to start flowing to projects that have hit those benchmarks as well as due to recent comments from Trump disparaging the program as “so bad.”
It is not yet clear what Republican control would bring. US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday last week said that he wants to “streamline” the law, after floating — and then immediately walking back — the possibility of a wholesale repeal.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
SK Hynix Inc warned of increased volatility in the second half of this year despite resilient demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips from big tech providers, reflecting the uncertainty surrounding US tariffs. The company reported a better-than-projected 158 percent jump in March-quarter operating income, propelled in part by stockpiling ahead of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. SK Hynix stuck with a forecast for a doubling in demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) essential to Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, which in turn drive giant data centers built by the likes of Microsoft Corp and Amazon.com Inc. That SK Hynix is maintaining its
RSS