The Biden administration officially awarded up to $6.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding to TSMC, the Taiwanese company building a semiconductor manufacturing facility in north Phoenix.
Earlier this year, the federal government announced plans to give over $30 billion in grants to private businesses to boost domestic semiconductor production.
“Today’s final agreement with TSMC – the world’s leading manufacturer of advanced semiconductors – will spur $65 billion 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 Joe Biden said in a statement. “This is the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in the history of the United States.”
TSMC first announced plans to build a manufacturing facility in Phoenix in 2020 during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office, well before the CHIPS Act.
But the company expanded those plans after the Biden-backed bipartisan legislation passed Congress in 2022.
“Today’s announcement is among the most critical milestones yet in the implementation of the bipartisan CHIPS & Science Act, and demonstrates how we are ensuring that the progress made to date will continue to unfold in the coming years, benefitting communities all across the country,” Biden said in the statement.
The TSMC announcement marks just the second official award of CHIPS Act grants after the Department of Commerce announced it would send up to $123 million to Polar Semiconductor in Minnesota in September.
And the announcement came just one day after Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs expressed concerns about the future of that funding under the incoming Trump administration due to critical comments both Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance made about the legislation.
Hobbs said her office has plans to speak with the incoming president about the importance of the funding.
“This is American manufacturing,” Hobbs said at an event announcing a program to boost the state’s semiconductor industry workforce. “It's critical for American jobs, critical for our national security.”
In addition to the grants announced today, TSMC will receive up to $5 billion in loans through the CHIPS Act to help build out its $65 billion Phoenix campus.
Intel in Chandler and Amkor in Peoria are also in line to receive grants and loans funded by the bipartisan legislation.
