Texas Instruments won a preliminary $1.6 billion award under the US CHIPS Act to support multiple projects in Texas and Utah in support of the chipmaker’s planned $18 billion investment through 2029 for three new facilities.
CHIPS Act grants have totaled more than $31 billion so far, and that includes more than $8 billion to Intel and other multi-billion dollar awards to Micron and others. Some officials wondered when TI would be considered, if at all.
Commerce officials said on Friday that TI’s investments and the grant would significantly increase domestic production of “foundational chips” which generally means mature nodes that came into short supply during the early days of the pandemic. TI is one of the only companies building high-volume 300 mm wafer capacity for foundational technologies.
“Shortages of current-generation and mature-node chips were one of the driving factors of supply chain disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing acute impacts on the US auto, industrial and defense industries,” Commerce officials said in a statement.
The three projects TI envisions include two new large-scale 300 mm fab facilities in Sherman, Texas, that are expected to produce 65nm to 130nm chips, with anticipated production of more than 100 million chips every day. In Lehi, Utah, TI has committed to build a new 300 mm fab to produce 28 nm to 65 nm analog and embedded processing chips.
Overall, 2,000 jobs would be created.
In addition to the $1.6 billion in proposed direct funds, CHIPS would lend about $3 billion to TI.
TI CEO Haviv Ilan said the company plans to grow internal manufacturing to more than 95% by 2030. “We’re building geopolitically dependable, 300mm capacity at scale to provide the analog and embedded processing chips our customers will need for years to come,” he said in a statement.