Amkor Technology Inc. is the latest company to receive direct funding through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s CHIPS and Science Act. The $400 million in proposed funding will be used to help the construction of Amkor’s outsourced advanced packaging and test facility in Peoria, Arizona.
Amkor is using $2 billion of its own investment in the Arizona factory that it claims will be the largest test and packaging facility in the U.S. when completed. This will allow advanced semiconductors to be tested and final assembly for high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI), communications and automotive sectors.
Under the agreement with the DOC, the move is to significantly expand domestic capacity for advanced packaging, which is widely believed to be the next frontier of innovation in the semiconductor industry, and likely to be a current and future critical component to the chip supply chain.
Additionally, major semiconductor companies and foundries like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Apple, GlobalFoundries and Intel all will be able to package and test semiconductors domestically. This will allow a full end-to-end cycle of the chip manufacturing process in the U.S., DOC said.
“One of the fundamental goals of the CHIPS and Science Act is creating an advanced packaging ecosystem in the U.S. to ensure full start to finish chip production occurs domestically,” said Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce. “Advanced packaging drives chip innovation at all levels, and because of President Biden’s leadership, the U.S. will have a robust domestic footprint in this critical technology. The leading-edge chips that will be packaged right here in Arizona are foundational to technologies of the future that will define global economic and national security for decades to come.”
CHIPs funding
Amkor is the 14th company in the U.S. to receive funding from the CHIPS Act. Overall the law has doled out about $35 billion to companies with roughly about $4 billion left.
The companies that have received funding include:
- BAE Systems — $35 million
- Absolics — $75 million
- Micron Technology — $6.14 billion
- Rocket Labs — $23.9 million
- GlobalFoundries — $1.5 billion
- Polar Semiconductor — $120 million
- Intel Corp. — $8.5 billion
- TSMC — $6.6 billion
- Samsung — $6.4 billion
- Microchip — $162 million
- GlobalWafers — $400 million
- Rogue Valley Microdevices — $6.7 million
- Entegris — $75 million
