The US government plans to reduce Intel Corp’s preliminary US$8.5 billion federal chips grant to less than US$8 billion, the New York Times reported on Sunday, citing unnamed sources.
The change took into account a US$3 billion contract Intel had been offered to make chips for the Pentagon, the sources said.
This spring US President Joe Biden’s administration said it would award Intel nearly US$20 billion in grants and loans, supercharging the company’s domestic semiconductor chip output and marking the US government’s largest outlay to subsidize leading-edge chip production.
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The US announced a preliminary agreement for US$8.5 billion in grants and up to US$11 billion in loans for Intel in Arizona, with some of the funding to be used to build two new factories and modernize an existing one.
The outlay was part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a bid to boost domestic semiconductor output with US$52.7 billion in funding, including US$39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor production and US$11 billion for research and development.
On Nov. 15, the US Department of Commerce announced it has finalized a US$6.6 billion government subsidy for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) US unit for semiconductor production in Phoenix, Arizona.
The TSMC award also includes up to US$5 billion in low-cost government loans.
In addition to TSMC, the commerce department on Wednesday last week said it has finalized a US$1.5 billion government subsidy for GlobalFoundries Inc for its production expansion in Malta, New York and Vermont.
The department has also allocated US$36 billion for chips projects including US$6.4 billion for Samsung Electronics Co and US$6.1 billion for Micron Technology Inc.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
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