Jiyoung Sohn and John Keilman of The Wall Street Journal report that Nvidia partner SK Hynix is betting $3.9 billion on the Midwest’s chip-making potential. They write:
South Korea’s SK Hynix said it plans to invest $3.9 billion in an advanced chip-packaging facility in West Lafayette, Ind., the latest win for Midwestern states seeking a bigger piece of America’s burgeoning semiconductor industry.
The planned plant is set to mass-produce high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, a critical component to artificial-intelligence computing, SK Hynix said Wednesday. The facility, which will also host research-and-development activities, is expected to start mass production in the second half of 2028 and bring more than 1,000 new jobs to the region, the firm said. […]
The state announced last year that EMP Shield, which makes products that protect electronic devices from magnetic pulses, plans to invest $1.9 billion in a chip-manufacturing plant in Burlington, Kan., while Wichita-based Integra Technologies aims to build a $1.8 billion facility for semiconductor assembly and testing.
Boyd, the site-selection consultant, said areas that are already popular for semiconductor factories are seeing increased competition for construction workers with specialized skills and the technicians and engineers needed to build and operate the facilities. That includes states such as Arizona, where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is investing around $40 billion to build up a chip-making base and driving up the competition for labor.
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