TAYLOR, Texas— The Commerce Department is on track to distribute all $39 billion in grants allocated under the CHIPS Act by the end of the year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told CNBC on Monday.
The Commerce Department is providing money to semiconductor companies to incentivize them to build manufacturing production capabilities in the United States. The Biden administration announced late Monday that it would provide SAMSUNG with up to $6.4 billion in grants to expand two chip plants in Central Texas, leaving about $16 billion left in grants to be distributed by the end of 2024.
“We’re on track. We’ve done three in the last month. We’ll do more in the next few weeks,” Raimondo said in an interview on the sidelines of Samsung’s award announcement event at its Taylor facility. “I expect all of the money in the CHIPS Act to be appropriated by the end of this year.”
So far, award announcements have focused mostly on cutting-edge chips, the most advanced type of semiconductors. Intel will receive up to $8.5 billion in incentives to invest in projects in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon, while Taiwan semiconductors is expected to receive up to $6.6 billion in grants for projects in Arizona.
Now that the largest grants have been distributed, future award packages will focus on memory chips and investments in suppliers, wafers and chemicals, Raimondo said.
The award Samsung announced Monday will help the company create what officials call an “advanced manufacturing ecosystem” in Central Texas, where multiple steps of the chip-making process will all be performed on a single campus. The Taylor plant will be twice the size of Samsung’s plant in South Korea, Raimondo said.
“It’s a small manufacturing town and suppliers will come around,” he continued. “So when I say the entire ecosystem, it’s the R&D, the packaging, the manufacturing, the job training and all the upstream suppliers that are going to make America stronger and safer.”