The Biden administration on Wednesday said it is awarding Intel nearly $20 billion in grants and loans as part of the CHIPS Act, supercharging the company’s domestic semiconductor output and marking the government’s largest outlay to subsidize leading-edge chip production.
President Joe Biden will announce the preliminary agreement for $8.5 billion in grants and up to $11 billion in loans for Intel in Arizona, where some of the funding will be used to build two new factories and modernize an existing one.
Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo called it a huge deal and one of the largest investments ever in US semiconductor manufacturing.
“It means leading-edge semiconductors made in the United States of America,” she said Tuesday, noting that the administration hopes to increase the United States’ share of leading-edge chip production from 0% to 20% by 2030 through the subsidy program.
The historic outlay shows the Biden administration is betting big on Intel as part of the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, a bid to boost domestic semiconductor output with $52.7 billion in funding, including $39 billion in subsidies for semiconductor production and $11 billion for research and development.
It could also help Biden, who lags rival former Republican President Donald Trump in voter perceptions of the US economy, to again take Arizona in November’s presidential election. The Democrat narrowly won the Southwestern swing state in 2020.
Click here to read the full story at the New York Post.
