Amid domestic semiconductor wave, Texas Instruments begins $30B build

Dive Brief:

Dallas-based semiconductor company Texas Instruments broke ground last month on its estimated $30 billion facility in Sherman, Texas, according to a company announcement. It’s the largest private sector investment in Texas history, according to the release. Production is expected to start in 2025.
The facility’s four fabricators, also known as “fabs,” will manufacture 300-mm wafer semiconductors, which are used in a variety of electronic devices. The factory will create as many as 3,000 direct jobs, according to the release. The town won the bid against a competitor location in Singapore, according to local news outlet KXII.
Texas Instruments will use the facility to bolster a growing corps of new fabs that are part of a larger industry-wide push to manufacture more chips in the U.S. The company has one fab in Dallas, and two in Richardson, Texas, the second of which will start production later this year, according to the release. It also recently acquired a fab in Lehi, Utah, from competitor Micron, which will start production in 2023.

Dive Insight:

Semiconductor fabricators are taking off around the country. Fabs centered in Arizona in particular, such as two Intel fabs worth $20 billion and one Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) fab worth $12 billion, are making headlines as the country and industry grapple with supply chain issues, which have led to higher prices and stymied consumer good production, according to CNBC.

More recently, Intel has selected a Gilbane-led team to work on its two fabs, worth more than $20 billion, in Licking County, Ohio, according to the company. The project will generate 7,000 construction jobs over the course of the build.

"Today is an important milestone as we lay the groundwork for the future growth of semiconductors in electronics to support our customers’ demand for decades to come," TI chairman, president and CEO Rich Templeton said in the release.

The industry broadly just had a banner year as well. In 2021, global semiconductor industry sales totaled $555.9 billion with 1.15 trillion semiconductors sold, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Those sales increased 26.2% from 2020’s total of $440.4 billion, even with supply chain issues.

SIA CEO and President John Neuffer said that the rise in chip creation was in response to growing demand, and said in the release that production rose to “unprecedented levels” last year.

“Demand for semiconductor production is projected to rise significantly in the years ahead, as chips become even more heavily embedded in the essential technologies of now and the future,” Neuffer said in the release.