Samsung has announced that it plans to build a new state-of-the-art chip building factory. It will do so in Taylor, a town near Austin, Texas, where the South Korean giant already had one of the most modern production plants in the world. The new factory will be built with a mega-investment of 17 billion dollars. The works will begin in the course of the year and will end in 2024, the year in which production should already be fully operational.
Samsung has not gone into technical details on what it will build in the Texan factory but has made it known that there will be developments in various areas, from 5G to high-performance computing passing through artificial intelligence. Precisely for this reason, it is assumed that the focus will be on chips with 5 nm architecture or even more recent.
Taylor’s choice for the construction of the new chip plant (which had already been announced some time ago, without disclosing the location where it would be built) was dictated by several factors. The town is well supplied in terms of infrastructure and related industries. Furthermore, Samsung found the agreements with the local government beneficial in terms of concessions and incentives.
The new factory, which will create 2,000 new direct jobs, could be further expanded in the future thanks to the implementation of a series of research programs such as the Samsung Skills Center, which favors the training of highly specialized figures.
Kinam Kim, CEO of Samsung Electronics, said: “By increasing production capacity we will be able to better meet the needs of our customers and we will be able to help strengthen the chip value chain, which in this particular historical moment is going through a complex period, to say the least, we are also proud to offer new jobs and support the birth of new talent. Above all, it’s great to announce the project right now as Samsung celebrates 25 years of semiconductor manufacturing in the US”.
Meanwhile, statements aside, one cannot fail to note that Samsung has decided to build the new factory near Austin, a city that already hosts Tesla’s new Gigafacatory (and also the registered office).
Considering that Samsung and Tesla already have reports on the supply of chips from 2021, the choice of the South Korean giant seems really not accidental, although none of the interested parties have mentioned this particular aspect.