According to the company this investment will be used to securely produce more essential chips for automotive, IoT, aerospace, defence, and other vital markets.
GF is the only US-based pure play foundry with a global manufacturing footprint including facilities in the US, Europe, and Singapore and is the first pure play foundry to receive a major award (over $1.5 billion) from the CHIPS and Science Act, designed to strengthen American semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains and national security.
The proposed funding will support three GF projects:
- Expansion of GF’s existing Malta, NY, fab by adding critical technologies already in production in GF’s Singapore and Germany facilities geared towards supporting the US auto industry. With the number of semiconductor chips in each car or truck increasing, this expansion is key to ensuring supply chain resilience for the growing demand and to delivering for GF’s automotive customers including General Motors. This will continue to diversify GF’s flagship Malta fab into new technologies and end markets.
- Construction of a new state-of-art fab on the Malta campus to meet expected customer demand for US-made essential chips across a broad range of markets and applications including automotive, aerospace, defence and AI. The new fab, which has already been granted some necessary permitting, will leverage the site’s existing infrastructure and ecosystem, enabling a fast and efficient path from construction to production. The semiconductor market is expected to double over the next decade, and GF’s new fab will be positioned to capture the feature-rich mature, essential chip segment which is expected to continue to represent more than 60% of the semiconductor market. Construction of this new fab combined with expansion of GF’s existing site is expected to triple the existing capacity of the Malta campus over the next 10+ years. These two projects are expected to increase wafer production to 1 million per year once all phases are complete.
- Modernisation of GF’s longest continuously operated fab and the nation’s first and largest 200mm facility in Essex Junction, Vermont. The project will upgrade existing facilities, expand capacity as well as create the first U.S. facility capable of high-volume manufacturing of next-generation gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors for use in electric vehicles, power grids, data centers, 5G and 6G smartphones and other critical technologies.
GF plans to invest more than $12 billion over the next 10 plus years across its two US sites through public-private partnerships with support from the federal and state governments as well as from its ecosystem partners, including key strategic customers.
In support of the two Malta, New York projects, the state government has also announced $575mn in planned direct funding for New York State Green CHIPS. Also announced was a $15mn in planned funding for NYS Workforce Development activities for GlobalFoundries as well as $30mn in planned funding for NYS Infrastructure upgrades and Energy incentives provided by the New York Power Authority (NYPA).
Combined, these investments are expected to create over 1,500 manufacturing jobs and about 9,000 construction jobs over the life of these projects.
“These proposed investments, along with the investment tax credit (ITC) for semiconductor manufacturing, are central to the next chapter of the GlobalFoundries story and our industry. They will also play an important role in making the US semiconductor ecosystem more globally competitive and resilient and cements the New York Capital Region as a global semiconductor hub,” said Dr. Thomas Caulfield, president and CEO of GF. “With new onshore capacity and technology on the horizon, as an industry we now need to turn our attention to increasing the demand for US-made chips, and to growing our talented U.S. semiconductor workforce.”
To attract and cultivate a pipeline of semiconductor talent that will be needed in New York and Vermont, GF recently announced a new student loan repayment program to help current employees and new recruits pay down student loan debt.
The new benefit program is part of the company’s multi-million-dollar investment to strengthen the semiconductor talent workforce by helping to ease the financial burden of higher education and training of the company’s present and future employees.
GF is also partnering with a broad range of universities and community colleges nationwide to help build a diverse workforce and semiconductor talent pipeline. As part of receiving CHIPS and Science Act funding, GF said that it would continue to invest in and develop new workforce development efforts including curriculum development, internship and apprenticeship programs, K-12 STEM outreach as well as additional education and training programs.
