(Reuters) – Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries on Monday announced long-term plans to build a second factory near its headquarters in Malta, New York and a shorter-term $1 billion spending plan to boost output to address the global chip shortage.
Owned by the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co, GlobalFoundries in 2018 stopped pursuing the technology needed to make advanced computing chips, citing escalating costs. Instead, the company focuses on specialized fields like radio-frequency communications chips, which are used in 5G, and high-reliability manufacturing for automotive customers.
GlobalFoundries said it plans to add over the next several years a second factory at its “Fab 8” site in upstate New York, where it relocated its headquarters from California earlier this year. The new factory will double the site’s chipmaking capacity and add 1,000 jobs, GlobalFoundries said, adding that the factory will be funded through “private-public partnerships including customers, federal and state investments.”
In the shorter term, GlobalFoundries said it plans to spend $1 billion immediately to boost the existing factory’s output by 150,000 wafers per year. Wafers are the silicon discs on which semiconductors are made in bulk, and each one can contain thousands of chips.
GlobalFoundries earlier this year announced a new chip factory in Singapore and an expansion of a chip factory in Dresden, Germany.
Mubadala is planning to take GlobalFoundries public in an initial public offering, sources have told Reuters. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Intel Corp was exploring acquiring GlobalFoundries for $30 billion.
A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that there are no active discussions with Intel yet, and Mubadala is focused on taking GlobalFoundries public as planned.
Mubadala declined to comment.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis and Saeed Azhar; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
