The capital injection is part of the $40 billion investment announced in December:
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) board has approved a plan of capital injection of up to $3.5 billion to TSMC Arizona, the company said.
In December, the foundry behemoth announced its plans to open a second chip factory in Arizona, boosting its investment in the US threefold to $40 billion. This represented "the largest foreign direct investment in Arizona history and one of the largest foreign direct investments in the history of the United States," the company said.
The capital injection is part of the $40 billion investment announced in December.
"When complete, TSMC Arizona's two fabs will manufacture over 600,000 wafers per year, with estimated end-product value of more than US$40 billion," the company announced in its December statement.
TSMC's US investments are part of the chipmaker's strategic move to expand beyond Taiwan, due to the country's political tensions with China.
Last month, the company said it is considering opening its first plant in Europe and a second one in Japan. The Europe plant is likely to come up in the German city of Dresden.
Related: TSMC Triples Arizona Chip Plant Investment, Apple Confirms to Only Use Chips Made in the US
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Taiwan's TSMC or the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd. announced on Tuesday that they will be tripling their planned investment at the Arizona plant in the US to a total of $40 billion. US President Joe Biden, who visited the TSMC plant in Arizona, hailed the project as it emerges as one of the largest foreign investments in US history.
[...] Mark Liu, the chairman of TSMC estimates to have an annual revenue of $10 billion when the two planned chip fabrication plants open, adding that customers would have annual sales of $40 billion from products using chips made there.
Three of TSMC's largest customers, Apple Inc, NVIDIA Corp and AMD Inc, have stated that they expect to source most of their upcoming chips from the American plants of TSMC.
Apple meanwhile, has stated that going forward, they will only be using chips that have been made at an American TSMC plant. Speaking at the event, Apple's CEO Tim Cook said, "We work with TSMC to manufacture the chips that help power our products all over the world. And we look forward to expanding this work in the years to come as TSMC forms new and deeper roots in America."
[...] Taiwan's dominant position as a maker of chips used in technology from cellphones and cars to fighter jets has sparked concerns of over-reliance on the island, especially as China ramps up military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday February 20, @04:38PM
Intel historically was the company to expand during downturns. It could leverage its deep pockets not to worry about cyclical demands and build new sites/expand existing ones. This also let them spend the good times making as many chips as they can with the fabs they have.
Intel is still rapidly expanding, in part because of the CHIPS act and in part because this strategy is still a good one. And in part they need to get their manufacturing competitive again - I doubt they will ever return to the high margin server chips they know and love but with appropriate pricing they won't fall by the wayside.
TSMC is expanding rapidly for similar reasons listed here, with the extra reason of diversifying geopolitically. If Intel (and maybe Samsung) can't keep up, they will really turn into the single vendor in the world for chips that are increasing in demand and they would only be limited by lack of capacity.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Monday February 20, @05:27PM (7 children)
<no-sarcasm>
Doesn't a chip fab need lots of ultra pure water?
</no-sarcasm>
Fortunately Arizona has practically unlimited amounts of water.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday February 20, @06:32PM (2 children)
Sending the message that voting blue means getting tech money is worth running a few pipes through the desert.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday February 21, @02:53AM (1 child)
Sending the message that voting blue means getting tech money is worth running a few pipes through the desert.
And from where are you suggesting stealing the water? All the water anywhere near that part of the desert has already been stolen. It is to the point that salt water is starting to soak into the water table from the ocean and the few seasonal rivers have only sand and gravel left in the beds. Desalinization isn't an option. It is neither economically viable yet nor ecologically sound the way it is currently done.
If they were building in Arkansas or Tennessee, that'd be a different matter.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday February 21, @01:13PM
Intel manages a net positive so I don't see an issue: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-achieves-net-positive-water-3-countries.html [intel.com]
Regardless, I'm guessing the additional costs from direct solar-desalination are marginal for fabs since they'd otherwise need to reverse osmosis.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20, @07:51PM
More water than Tatooine, at least.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday February 20, @08:21PM (1 child)
They recycle most of it. Did you really think tap water is pure enough for a fab, let alone lake water?
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21, @08:32AM
They still need lots of water though ( https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought [theverge.com] ).
If it was so easy they could just reuse your snot and pee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21, @08:28AM
Yeah I was thinking that too, it's one of the obviously top places for nanometer precision chip fab stuff. Plenty of clean water ( https://news.asu.edu/20221115-arizona-impact-future-water-arizona [asu.edu] ) and no earthquakes ( https://azgs.arizona.edu/center-natural-hazards/earthquakes [arizona.edu] ).
Florida could be good too, but I hear there's a high incidence of Florida Man there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20, @09:04PM (1 child)
I'm partial to peanut butter . . .
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Monday February 20, @09:51PM
We're talking about chip fabrication.
I do not need peanut butter until it comes time to attach the heat sink to the cpu.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...