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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract manufacturer of silicon chips, said Friday it would spend $12 billion to build a chip factory in Arizona, as U.S. concerns grow about dependence on Asia for the critical technology.
TSMC TSM, +2.31% 2330, +1.53% said the project, disclosed earlier Thursday by The Wall Street Journal, has the support of the federal government and the state of Arizona. It comes as the Trump administration has sought to jump-start development of new chip factories in the U.S. due to rising fears about the U.S.’s heavy reliance on Taiwan, China and South Korea to produce microelectronics and other key technologies.
TSMC made the decision to go ahead with the project at a board meeting on Tuesday in Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter, adding that both the State and Commerce Departments are involved in the plans. Construction will begin next year with production targeted for 2024, the company said in a statement.
TSMC’s new plant would make chips branded as having 5-nanometer transistors, the tiniest, fastest and most power-efficient ones manufactured today. TSMC just started rolling out 5-nanometer chips at a factory in Taiwan in recent months. TSMC said the plant would make 20,000 wafers a month, making it a relatively small facility for a company that made more than 12 million wafers last year alone. TSMC’s Fab 18 in Taiwan, which currently produces its 5-nanometer chips, was targeted for 100,000 wafers a month when it broke ground in 2018.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com:
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