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Micron to build America’s largest chip factory

Micron Technology has announced that will invest 20,000 million dollars in the construction which has been described as the largest semiconductor factory in the United States to date. In addition, he has pointed out that those 20,000 million may only be the beginning of the investment, since it is possible that over the next 20 years it will spend up to 100,000 million dollars to expand it.

The factory will be in New York state, in Onondaga County, and will be roughly the size of 40 football fields. It is expected to create up to 50,000 jobs in the area, including 9,000 high-paying Micron jobs. The plant will also serve to significantly increase the local supply of chips.

The announcement follows the one made last September, when the company announced that it would invest some 15,000 million dollars until the end of this decade in an advanced memory factory in Boise (Idaho, United States), after confirming weeks before that it would invest 40,000 million dollars until 2030 in the construction of state-of-the-art plants for the manufacture of memory in the US.

In a statement, the President and CEO of Micron, Sanjay Mehrotra, has thanked President Joe Biden and members of the United States Congress for approving the CHIPS and Science Act last August, which allocates 50,000 million dollars to support companies that want to build chip manufacturing facilities in American soil. With it, the US government wants to revitalize the domestic manufacturing of semiconductors, which in recent years has dropped due to competition from East Asian countries.

Micron to build America's largest chip factory

Of the amount provided by law for the development of chip manufacturing plants, Micron will take 5,500 million incentive from the state of New York, which will be received throughout the life of the construction project. You will also receive federal advance grants, and tax credits, as also stated in the CHIPS and Science Act. These advantages are intended to facilitate both the hiring of personnel and the investment of capital.

Still, Micron, like the rest of the technology companies, is going to have to face a significant barrier: the lack of suitable talent. Gupta acknowledges that finding skilled workers is going to be difficult, though there are a number of programs at universities and community colleges that are sponsored by chipmakers to train skilled workers. Both Micron and the State of New York have pledged to invest $500 million in workforce and community development, with an emphasis on disadvantaged populations, while the factory is being built.

Still, manufacturers must compete on wages with hyperscalars and software makers that can pay more, though Gupta hopes government grants can help here. «The factories will come into operation between 2024 and 2030 and most have a high level of automation. Construction workers are needed initially, but staffing and operations requirements are not too high«.

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