Micron has said it will invest up to $3 billion in the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, with $500 million of that going to GlobalWafers as strategic financing for its 300 mm raw silicon wafer plant in Sherman, Texas, alongside a 10-year agreement giving Micron access to that plant's wafer output. In a separate announcement, the memory maker raised its planned U.S. spending to more than $250 billion through 2035, up from $200 billion, and confirmed the first concrete pour at its Clay, New York campus more than a quarter ahead of schedule.
Sherman is the sole operating facility in the U.S. capable of producing advanced 300 mm raw silicon wafers, the substrate on which every leading-edge DRAM, NAND, and logic die is built. GlobalWafers opened the plant in May last year and holds a $406 million CHIPS Act award covering the site and a silicon-on-insulator facility in St. Peters, Missouri. The 142-acre campus is designed for up to six phases, one of which is running. Micron's other American sites draw their wafers from Japan, Taiwan, Germany, and South Korea; Shin-Etsu, SUMCO, GlobalWafers, Siltronic, and SK Siltron together control the overwhelming majority of global 300 mm supply, making raw silicon the most concentrated layer in the chip space.
