The Biden-Harris administration announced today that the Department of Commerce has awarded TSMC Arizona Corporation up to $6.6 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS and Science Act – the first major award finalized under the $52 billion program.
TSMC Arizona is a unit of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, which is headquartered in Taiwan and has operations worldwide.
The award marks a huge win for the Biden administration before President-elect Donald Trump – who has criticized the program in recent weeks – takes office in January. The Biden administration first announced the preliminary agreement with TSMC in April.
President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law in August 2022, making up to $52 billion of funding available to incentivize semiconductor makers to establish new manufacturing operations in the United States.
“Today’s final agreement with TSMC – the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductors – will spur $65 billion dollars of private investment to build three state-of-the-art facilities in Arizona and create tens of thousands of jobs by the end of the decade,” President Biden said in a statement. “This is the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in the history of the United States.”
President Biden said today’s announcement “is among the most critical milestones yet” in the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act.
“The first of TSMC’s three facilities is on track to fully open early next year, which means that for the first time in decades an America manufacturing plant will be producing the leading-edge chips used in our most advanced technologies – from our smartphones, to autonomous vehicles, to the data centers powering artificial intelligence,” he said.
The $6.6 billion award will allow parent company TSMC to expand its presence in Phoenix, Ariz. Through the investment, the Commerce Department said TSMC Arizona will create about 6,000 direct manufacturing jobs, over 20,000 unique construction jobs, and tens of thousands of indirect jobs in this decade.
TSMC’s three fabs will bring some of the most advanced semiconductor technologies to the United States. The first fab will produce 4nm FinFET process technologies, which is a type of a type of field-effect transistor (FET).
TSMC Arizona said the second fab will produce the world’s most advanced 2nm nanosheet process technology, in addition to its existing plans to produce 3nm process technologies. The company’s third fab will produce 2nm or more advanced process technologies depending on customer demand.
Under the agreement, the CHIPS Program Office will also make up to $5 billion of proposed loans available to TSMC Arizona – in addition to the direct funding of up to $6.6 billion.
“The Biden-Harris administration’s investment in TSMC Arizona is a turning point for American innovation and manufacturing that will strengthen our economic and national security,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “The leading-edge chips that will be manufactured in Arizona are foundational to the United States’ technological and economic leadership in the 21st century.”
