GlobalFoundries Inc, the biggest US-based provider of made-to-order chips, announced a plan to spend US$16 billion to bolster domestic production.
The company is budgeting US$13 billion to expand existing plants in New York and Vermont and making a further US$3 billion commitment to research into advanced packaging and other technologies in the US, it said in a statement yesterday.
GlobalFoundries is the latest company to publicly commit billions to increasing US production of electronics — announcements that US President Donald Trump has touted as evidence that his policies are succeeding.
Photo: Cindy Schultz, Bloomberg
The chipmaker is making the investments with the endorsement of customers such as Apple Inc, Qualcomm Inc and General Motors Co, it said.
New chief executive officer Tim Breen said the company is not providing a detailed breakdown of when the cash will be spent and will remain flexible in order to match supply with demand.
The emphasis on the US is “a recognition of where there is the most unmet demand today,” he said in an interview.
Chip customers are looking for more local production and want to reduce dependence on suppliers that have their manufacturing concentrated in one location, Breen said.
“Supply security matters,” he said. Requests for more production out of US plants have increased during the last six months, he said.
Globalfoundries, based in Malta, New York, manufactures so-called essential chips for semiconductor and electronics makers. Such components do not require the most advanced production, but they do handle vital tasks, such as controlling power and managing the flow of data inside devices.
The artificial intelligence boom also is increasing demand for a variety of chips. The GlobalFoundries investment is “a strategic response to the explosive growth in artificial intelligence,” the company said.
The market has boosted the need for power-efficient and high-bandwidth chips used in data centers and communications equipment.
The company, which is majority-owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, had previously been more conservative in its investment plans, saying it would only add capacity when supported by demand.
On average, it has spent about US$1.4 billion on new plants and equipment annually over the last five years. That’s a fraction of the multiple tens of billions that companies like Intel Corp and Samsung Electronics Co have spent.
Globalfoundries operates plants in the US, Germany and Singapore. The company gave up on trying to compete with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) in the market for the most advanced production and has instead focused on cheaper techniques needed for other types of chips — components it says are becoming increasingly valuable.
GlobalFoundries says it is carving out lucrative niches of the semiconductor industry. That includes an effort to combine chips with optical data components and an alternative material for power management chips, called gallium nitride.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
RSS