WASHINGTON – Micron Technology, the largest US maker of computer memory chips, is poised to get US$6.1 billion (S$8.3 billion) in grants from the Commerce Department to help pay for domestic factory projects, part of an effort to bring semiconductor production back to American soil.
The award, which is not yet finalised, is slated to be revealed next week, according to people familiar with the matter. Micron, like Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), will also accept loans as part of its award package, said two of the people. The total value of those loans remains unclear.
US President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel on April 25 to the Syracuse, New York, region as part of the announcement, the people said. Micron, based in Boise, Idaho, is building factories near Syracuse, as well as in its home state.
Representatives of Micron, the Commerce Department and the White House declined to comment.
The 2022 Chips and Science Act set aside US$39 billion for direct grants, as well as loans and loan guarantees worth US$75 billion, to revitalise American chipmaking after decades of production shifting to Asia. Officials have unveiled six preliminary awards so far: three to firms that produce older-generation semiconductors, plus multibillion-dollar packages for Intel, TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has said the agency plans to spend about US$28 billion of the grant funding on leading-edge projects.
After the preliminary agreement is announced, Micron would enter months of due diligence and then receive the money in tranches tied to project-specific benchmarks.
Micron has pledged to build as many as four factories in New York state, plus one in Idaho. But those plans require the company to receive “the combination of sufficient chips grants, investment tax credits and local incentives to address the cost difference compared with overseas expansion”, Micron chief executive officer Sanjay Mehrotra said in March. The company is proceeding with projects in China, India and Japan as well.
Ms Raimondo has said that her agency will prioritise funding projects that begin production by the end of the decade. Two of Micron’s four New York sites are on track to meet that benchmark, while the other two will not be operational until 2041, the company said in a recent filing. This means that Micron’s award is likely to support only the first two New York facilities, people familiar with the matter said earlier.
Computer memory and storage chips are a vital part of everything from smartphones to the biggest data centres, where they store information and help advanced systems process information. Production is primarily done in Asia. Micron’s biggest two competitors, Samsung and SK Hynix, account for the majority of that manufacturing.
Those firms also plan to build factories in the United States – for logic chips and advanced packaging respectively – as part of a groundswell of more than US$200 billion in private semiconductor investment spurred by the Chips Act. BLOOMBERG
