A second major American production base is taking shape in the plans of the world’s largest contract chipmaker, and North Texas is the leading candidate.
Taiwan’s United Daily News and Economic Daily News reported on September 29 that the company is prioritizing a Dallas-area site that could hold six advanced wafer fabs. The outlay has not been fixed but is expected to exceed the $265B already committed to Arizona.
Customer geography explains much of the pull. US clients accounted for about 75.6 percent of first-half revenue, and Nvidia, Intel, AMD and Apple are all pushing for more domestic capacity. Washington has also renewed the threat of tariffs of up to 200 percent on manufacturers that keep production offshore.
Conditions at home add pressure. Land, water and power are increasingly hard to secure in Taiwan, and the Dallas region is seen as more stable than Phoenix, which has wrestled with water shortages and workforce gaps.
The area is already nicknamed Silicon Prairie, with Texas Instruments, Samsung, Coherent and Tesla operating nearby. Sources suggest the new fabs could run more advanced nodes than Arizona, because later plants tend to start at the leading edge.
Nothing is final. The company has not commented and its board has not approved a decision. Suppliers say the evaluation is nearing its end but that no formal notices have gone out.
