Taiwan Semiconductor lifts chip investment in Arizona to $40B

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is set to make history with one of the largest foreign investments in the United States. The company will announce plans on Tuesday to build its second chip plant in Arizona, increasing its investment in the state to $40B. The event will be attended by President Biden, as well as CEOs who will benefit from the increase in American chip production, like Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Micron’s Sanjay Mehrotra and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

Cutting edge: TSMC previously disclosed a $12B investment plan to build its first factory in Arizona that was slated to manufacture 5-nanometer chips (and later changed to 4-nanometers) with mass production expected in 2024. Construction on the second site that will make 3-nanometer chips (the tiniest “die shrink” available today) will start in the coming year, with production set to begin in 2026. Once the plants come online, they are expected to deliver enough chips to meet U.S. annual demand of 600K wafers per year, according to Ronnie Chatterji, White House Coordinator for CHIPS Implementation at the National Economic Council.

“It’s the foundation of our personal electronics, and also the future of quantum computing and AI,” Chatterji declared. “That’s the definition of supply chain resilience. We won’t have to rely on anyone else to make the chips we need.” Warren Buffett recently took a major position in TSMC in a bet that the world cannot do without silicon.

Go deeper: The passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in early August helped provide certainty to companies like TSMC to expand their footprint in the U.S. The bill included $52B in loans, grants and other incentives, as well as billions in tax credits to support domestic semiconductor production. Washington has been worried about reliance on microchips made in Taiwan for years, but the dependence became more apparent during the pandemic, when supply chain issues affected everything from cars and electronics to healthcare equipment and advanced weapons systems. SeekingAlpha