China’s second-largest foundry is pouring money into Wuxi after its strongest half-year on record. Hua Hong Grace is taking a majority stake in a joint venture that will spend roughly $4.17B to lift 300mm wafer capacity at the site.
The Phase III expansion adds about 55,000 wafers of monthly output and reinforces a specialty-process lineup built around embedded memory, power and analog chips. Investment and shareholders agreements were signed in late August.
The timing follows a sharp earnings rebound and record first-half shipments for Hua Hong Grace. Chinese chip designers are crowding foundry capacity as AI demand spills beyond leading-edge logic into the mature-node specialties where Hua Hong competes, and foundry prices have been climbing.
Beijing’s self-sufficiency campaign gives the project policy cover, even as export controls keep Chinese fabs short of the most advanced Western equipment. For Hua Hong, the Wuxi buildout is a wager that domestic AI growth will keep specialty lines as busy as the leading-edge fabs run by larger rivals.
