$4 billion chip investment from Applied Materials

Applied Materials, a US provider of equipment, services, and software for semiconductor manufacturing, announced that it plans to invest $4 billion to establish an R&D center in Silicon Valley in order to accelerate semiconductor innovation. The company announced that the center was planned to accelerate the development and commercialization of core technologies needed by the global semiconductor and computing industries. The statement, which stated that the center will be located in Silicon Valley, noted that the new center is expected to shorten the time it takes for the industry to bring a technology from concept to commercialization by several years while also increasing the commercial success rate of new innovations and the return on R&D investments for the entire semiconductor ecosystem. It was reported in the statement that Applied Materials plans to invest nearly $4 billion over the next 7 years to establish the center, that the construction of the new center is planned to be completed in early 2026 and that it will host approximately $25 billion worth of research in its first 10 years. The statement noted that the center is expected to provide employment for nearly 1,500 construction workers, nearly 2,000 engineers and potentially 11,000 people from other industries during the construction period. It was emphasized that the scale of Applied Materials' investment will depend on the support it will receive under the CHIPS Act, which was signed into law by US President Joe Biden on August 9, 2022, to increase semiconductor production.