Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Intel will receive $8.5bn in direct funding and $11bn in loans from the US government to expand its capacity to make high-end chips, as it seeks to reinvent itself as a national champion in the sector and compete with the likes of Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung.
US President Joe Biden will travel to Intel’s site in Chandler, Arizona, on Wednesday to announce the package, which will go towards building new facilities for the company in the south-western state, as well as in Ohio, New Mexico and Oregon.
Biden’s intervention in Arizona — one of a handful of swing states that will decide the US presidential election pitting him against Donald Trump — comes as the Democratic president is trying to boost his languishing approval ratings on the economy.
The government funding for chip manufacturing, which was passed by Congress in 2022, is part of Biden’s sweeping agenda to revitalise domestic manufacturing in areas ranging from clean energy to semiconductors and steel.
During an event in Reno, Nevada, on Tuesday, Biden sought to emphasise his economic achievements, contrasting them with predecessor’s, saying he had created millions of jobs while Trump had passed a large tax cut for the wealthy and wants “to undo everything we’ve done”.
Intel has already committed to investing $100bn in chip manufacturing over the next five years. It had said it expects to further benefit from US Treasury tax credits that will allow it to write off up to 25 per cent of that investment.
The $8.5bn will be distributed in tranches, subject to Intel reaching certain “milestones”, senior White House officials said. They expect the funding to lead to 30,000 jobs in the chip sector.
The officials said the funds for Intel should start to arrive later this year once the agreement is finalised. In total, it is likely to constitute the largest such grant made under the 2022 Chips and Science Act, which provided for $52bn in subsidies to help shift semiconductor manufacturing back to the US amid geopolitical tensions with China.
Gina Raimondo, US commerce secretary, told reporters the grant would put the US on track to meet its goal of ensuring that 20 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips are made in the US by the end of the decade.
The vast majority of high-end semiconductors are currently manufactured by TSMC. The US relies on “a very small number of factories in Asia for all of our most sophisticated chips”, Raimondo said, something she described as an untenable situation from a US economic and national security perspective.
Raimondo added that further grants under the Chips Act would soon follow. TSMC and Samsung, which also operate facilities in the US, are both awaiting their own subsidies packages.
Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger called it a “defining moment for the US and Intel as we work to power the next great chapter of American semiconductor innovation”, particularly as the race to develop AI demanded evermore powerful and sophisticated chips.
Since taking the helm at the company three years ago, Gelsinger has attempted to restore the company’s leadership in the most advanced manufacturing processes, while at the same time turning it into an attractive option to help designers build their own chips, which may also compete with Intel’s.
Gelsinger has become a vocal advocate for shifting chip manufacturing back to the US after decades of under-investment. He has said his goal is to ensure that 50 per cent of all the world’s semiconductors are built in the US and Europe within a decade.
The new Chips Act funding will primarily be directed towards development of Intel’s 18A “node”, a reference to its manufacturing process for the smallest and most powerful chips. It marks the final step in Gelsinger’s plan to develop five such “nodes” in four years.
In February, Microsoft revealed that it would be one of Intel’s first 18A manufacturing customers.
Read the full article here
