Samsung to build $17B semiconductor fab in Taylor, Texas

Posted:
in General Discussion edited November 2021
Samsung on Tuesday announced plans to build an advanced semiconductor production facility in Taylor, Texas, a project estimated to create more than 2,000 directly-related high-tech jobs in the region.

Samsung Austin


With a total anticipated outlay of $17 billion for buildings, property improvements, machinery and equipment, the chip fab is Samsung's largest investment in the U.S. to date, the company said.

The facility expands the South Korean tech giant's presence in Texas, which is currently limited to a chip plant in Austin. Samsung's new fab will be dedicated to the manufacture of silicon to be applied in a variety of segments including mobile, 5G, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. According to The Wall Street Journal, capacity will go toward contract manufacturing.

"With greater manufacturing capacity, we will be able to better serve the needs of our customers and contribute to the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain," said Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO, Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division.

The company plans to break ground on the 5 million-square-meter site in the first half of 2022, with hopes to have the facility up and running in the second half of 2024. The plant is expected to create more than 2,000 jobs, and thousands of related jobs, when fully operational. Samsung also intends to create a Samsung Skills Center for the Taylor Independent School District that will provide skill development, internships and recruiting opportunities to local students.

Taylor reportedly offered tax incentives to woo Samsung, including property tax breaks that equate to about 92.5% for the first 10 years, the WSJ reported Monday.

"In addition to our partners in Texas, we are grateful to the Biden Administration for creating an environment that supports companies like Samsung as we work to expand leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.," Kim said. "We also thank the administration and Congress for their bipartisan support to swiftly enact federal incentives for domestic chip production and innovation."

Biden and Congress are looking to bolster U.S. chip manufacturing through funding and industry subsidies. In June, the Senate approved $52 billion in subsidies for new chipmaking facilities, though the legislation has yet to be approved by the House.

Beyond Samsung, TSMC and Intel are also planning major expansions to their respective semiconductor manufacturing capabilities amid a global chip crunch. TSMC, for example, plans to spend $100 billion on production-related investments over the next three years.

Read on AppleInsider

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,251member
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    danoxpsliceroundaboutnow
  • Reply 2 of 13
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,868member
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    The only thing the plant proves is that with a cost of only 17 billion dollars Apple can build a similar plant on American soil, but chooses not to.
    edited November 2021 pslice
  • Reply 3 of 13
    danox said:
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    The only thing the plant proves is that with a cost of only 17 billion dollars Apple can build a similar plant on American soil, but chooses not to.
    This is not the facts of the truth. The facts of the truth is Samsung has the technology of operating a chip plant. 
    rob53bloggerblogronn
  • Reply 4 of 13
    danox said:
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    The only thing the plant proves is that with a cost of only 17 billion dollars Apple can build a similar plant on American soil, but chooses not to.

    Apple doesn’t manufacture its products.  They rely on third party manufacturers including the plant in Austin Texas that builds the Mac Pro.  They have a ton of professional offices in the US though.


    The US does not have vertical manufacturing.  We can take raw materials and make products at the scale and efficiently  as China  
  • Reply 5 of 13
    Amazing ratio of Investment/Jobs created .....
  • Reply 6 of 13
    fred1fred1 Posts: 1,112member
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    First we whine that all the jobs have been moved overseas. Now that jobs are created in the US, we complain that they’re not good paying jobs? What’s next?
  • Reply 7 of 13
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,251member
    fred1 said:
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    First we whine that all the jobs have been moved overseas. Now that jobs are created in the US, we complain that they’re not good paying jobs? What’s next?
    I’m not whining about overseas jobs, I believe in a global economy. I’m also not talking about any jobs moving overseas since besides Intel I don’t believe there is any large scale semiconductor production being performed in the US. Two main reasons: 1) lack of large number of workers and 2) lack of raw materials. 

    Job creation under trump and Biden is all politics, not really much reality. Except for construction jobs, once these plants are constructed the number of employees will be minimal compared to the amount of money spent to build it along with bribes paid to local, state and federal politicians. Sorry, legal bribes in the form of lobbyist contributions. $17B plant only supporting 2000 employees? That means almost everything is automated. 
    muthuk_vanalingamroundaboutnowronn
  • Reply 8 of 13
    danoxdanox Posts: 2,868member
    danox said:
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    The only thing the plant proves is that with a cost of only 17 billion dollars Apple can build a similar plant on American soil, but chooses not to.

    Apple doesn’t manufacture its products.  They rely on third party manufacturers including the plant in Austin Texas that builds the Mac Pro.  They have a ton of professional offices in the US though.


    The US does not have vertical manufacturing.  We can take raw materials and make products at the scale and efficiently  as China  

    The choice is simple does America want to continue to be number one or not, or after a century of being on top does it want sink to the level of the UK….
  • Reply 9 of 13
    rob53 said:  $17B plant only supporting 2000 employees? That means almost everything is automated. 
    Automation is the primary reason the U.S. has so few manufacturing jobs. The manufacturing output of the U.S. is much larger than it was 30+ years ago, but there are 1/3 as many jobs connected to that output due to automation. 

    Plus the Jekyll/Hyde attitude of the business world is always fascinating. They relentlessly pursue government subsidies while also relentlessly portraying themselves as if they're self-made and independent. 
    edited November 2021 roundaboutnowdanox
  • Reply 10 of 13
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,371member
    2000 jobs in a small city with a population of less than 20,000, i.e., Taylor, Texas, is going to provide a very meaningful benefit to the community. Even after the construction and startup is completed the company will be paying for local utilities, services, vendors, suppliers, etc. The employees will be buying homes or paying rents, paying property taxes, buying local goods and services, contributing to the educational base, contributing to local charities and religious institutions, and driving new businesses to set up new shops or expand current ones. I don't know what the percentage of the current population is actively engaged in the work force, but it sure isn't the entire population, so 2000 new jobs will be a healthy increase.

    My only beef with these deals, regardless of who happens to be the center of political attention at the time, is that it totally sucks when the entire deal is a political sham and the company being courted doesn't follow through on their end, or the political gamesman moves on to pursue other flights of fancy, which is what happened with Foxconn in Wisconsin. If the deal does go through and the presence of the foreign investor creates not only the originally planned jobs but jobs on the supplier side, I really don't care where the "profits" are going. Does it really matter if the profits are going to a South Korean company or a savvy US billionaire who's figured out how to game the US tax system so he/she or the US company ends up paying zero taxes?

    As someone who's spent more than two decades in automation I know that, yes there are jobs that get eliminated, but in large part automation results in jobs being moved, redefined, and new jobs being created in vocations and specializations that did not previously exist. The new vocations and specializations that emerge from automation are generally much higher paying than the jobs that were eliminated. Apple tips their hat to this dynamic whenever they proclaim that Apple products are "Designed in California." Those product designers are very well paid and they also include a number of highly compensated engineers who are tasked with designing the industrialization processes and procedures that allow those Apple products to be built at a scale and velocity that few global product makers can even dream of. All of that "magic" that needs to take place to allow automation to be leveraged successfully is human driven, including the automation systems comprised of significant amounts of human developed hardware and software.

    Automation has always been a disruptive change agent, or at least dating back to the Roman Empire. Nobody likes change when it has a negative impact on their lives. Anything that impacts people needs to be managed with compassion, consideration, trust, and balance for all of the people who are affected in a negative way. Unfortunately, there is a conflict between automation, contract manufacturing, and establishing centers of excellence for certain critical global specialties that leverage cost and labor force efficiencies that runs counter to nationalistic and emotional trends and inward/local facing perspectives. This isn't unique and it isn't new. But it does mean that the new Samsung plant can operate with 2000 local workers because there's another significant population of automation industry workers in other locations, including the US, Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Sweden, and other countries throughout they world who have put the right systems in place to allow those 2000 to get their jobs done efficiently and effectively.
    roundaboutnowmattinozdanox
  • Reply 11 of 13
    rmoormoo Posts: 30member
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    These actually are high paying jobs. In the current Samsung plant in Austin, technicians start at $50,000 and engineers start at $90,000 a year. And those are old nodes: 14, 28 and 32nm. This facility will have 3nm nodes, meaning that Samsung will be able to charge more for them, and in turn the workers will get paid more. 

    Also, Taylor, Texas is merely waiving property taxes for 10 years, not writing Samsung a check. I know that outrages the pro-tax crowd for ideological reasons, but how much property taxes would Taylor, Texas have collected on the VACANT plot of land that Samsung is going to build their foundry on otherwise? Exactly. Taylor is half an hour from their Austin foundry, but land is a lot cheaper in Taylor than in Austin, making the property tax and other financial considerations practical while still being able to tap the same talent pool. All things considered, a good deal. Far better than letting Arizona, California and New York - all of whom wanted this plant - get this foundry merely for the privilege of being able to say that you didn't want Samsung unless they were going to pay their fair tax burden. If you are New York City you can play hardball while adhering to that philosophy and wind up losing Amazon to Virginia, but Taylor, Texas doesn't have NYC's constellation of billionaires and Fortune 500 companies to fall back on.
    edited November 2021 dewme
  • Reply 12 of 13
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,254member
    rob53 said:
    fred1 said:
    rob53 said:
    Samsung isn’t an American company so no profits stay in the US. Texas is basically giving Samsung the land for 2000 jobs, which won’t necessarily be good paying jobs. Does anyone actually think their products will cost less? Not me. 
    First we whine that all the jobs have been moved overseas. Now that jobs are created in the US, we complain that they’re not good paying jobs? What’s next?
    I’m not whining about overseas jobs, I believe in a global economy. I’m also not talking about any jobs moving overseas since besides Intel I don’t believe there is any large scale semiconductor production being performed in the US. Two main reasons: 1) lack of large number of workers and 2) lack of raw materials. 

    Job creation under trump and Biden is all politics, not really much reality. Except for construction jobs, once these plants are constructed the number of employees will be minimal compared to the amount of money spent to build it along with bribes paid to local, state and federal politicians. Sorry, legal bribes in the form of lobbyist contributions. $17B plant only supporting 2000 employees? That means almost everything is automated. 
    Well of course there is lots of automation. Do you think microchips get built by hand? 
  • Reply 13 of 13
    The line at Louie Mueller Barbecue is gonna be really long now
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