“Because most of the end customers are located in the United States, it is quite obvious that (the industry) wants to be in the United States,” Cho said.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Federal and state leaders also want semiconductor-related companies to locate here.
In late May, the Biden-Harris administration announced it had committed up to $75 million to help purchase and install equipment inside Absolics’ Covington factory. The grant is awarded under the CHIPS and Science Act, a $280 billion package that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 to help boost domestic technology manufacturing.
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Absolics is the first semiconductor-related company to obtain CHIPS financing, an announcement that was praised by the Semiconductor Industry Association.
“CHIPS is on track to deliver a tremendous return on investment and significant benefits to the U.S. economy, national security and supply chain resilience,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO of the trade association.
Credit: Courtesy of Absolics
Credit: Courtesy of Absolics
The plant, which was announced in 2021, was also the first economic development project announced by Gov. Brian Kemp when he took office. His spokeswoman credited state and local policies for Absolics’ investment in Georgia.
Located about 45 minutes east of Atlanta along I-20, the factory is expected to open “no later than September,” according to Cho. He said the 120,000-square-foot facility is a $300 million investment by SK Group and will employ about 200 local workers by the end of the year. The project is poised for an expansion that Cho said could double the size of its facility and employee base.
The company’s technology was developed in collaboration with former Georgia Tech electrical engineering professor Sung Jin Kim, who now works for SK Group. Its proprietary glass substrates will allow more chips to be packed into a single device using less power than the current industry standard of plastic substrates. The first phase of the factory can produce up to 48,000 glass substrates each year.
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While manufactured in Georgia, the substrates will be shipped to Asia for final assembly into semiconductors. Cho said he expects other parts of the computer chip supply chain to establish domestic operations in the coming years, especially given the growing presence of data center projects and other chipmakers like Nvidia.
Tech giants and data center developers have feverishly built massive warehouses filled with computer servers across the country, with the Atlanta metro area ranking as the fastest-growing data center market in the country. The fervor has raised concerns about the large amount of power data centers need and their financial performance thanks to government incentives, but they are big users of semiconductors that could help more domestic chip manufacturing.
“As these big players come in, we hope there will be more suppliers,” he said. “The ecosystem will be built around us.”
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