Samsung Electronics is considering spending more than $10 billion to build its first US chip factory, a major investment that will attract more American customers and help the company catch up with industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. TSMC is also investing in a $12 billion facility in the US, a plant expected to produce logic chips by 2024. According to a Bloomberg report, SAMSUNG Electronics Co. is expected to spend more than $10bn to build its own chip – which means manufacturing a plant in America, the first of its kind in its home country, as part of a major investment that it hopes will attract more American customers and help Samsung Electronics catch up with industry leaders Taiwan Semiconductors Manufacturing.
Samsung’s goal, according to a Bloomberg report, is to get chip manufacturing up and running by October 2022 and employ 1,900 people – and it is well on its way to commissioning its own chip manufacturing facility in the United States.
Wherever it is built, the new factory is likely to be among the most advanced it currently has, and it could put Samsung on track to become one of the world’s largest chipmakers, along with companies like Apple and Advanced Micro Devices. Manufacturing capacity in the US would allow Samsung to compete with other chip manufacturers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for Apple’s iPhones. It would also gain a competitive advantage over its competitors such as Intel and Qualcomm, as it competes against them on the world market.
If Samsung continues, it would go head-to-head with TSMC, which is building its own $12 billion chip plant in Arizona by 2024. If Samsung were to build its new $13 billion chip factories in China and the United States, they would be in a competitive position with TSMC, which is in negotiations with US authorities to build its own $10 billion-a-day chip factory in Taiwan by 2025.
The new plant would be the largest chip production facility in the United States and the second largest in South America. Samsung already has a semiconductor plant in Austin, where it recently partnered with AT & T to develop a new high-end mobile line for the U.S. market. Samsung wants to be the largest company in the $400 billion industry and plans to invest $116 billion over the next decade to achieve that. Samsung sees the expansion of its Austin plant as key to its goal of becoming the world’s largest foundry, according to the company’s application for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Samsung already makes chips for Qualcomm and Nvidia and is in the process of signing a new deal with Intel. According to a Bloomberg report, the new Samsung plant would be able to produce chips on the advanced 3-nanometer chip. The Bloomberg Technology Report said that Samsung’s potential location, which would have the capacity to produce chips up to three nanometers, would cost about $10 billion.