South Korean memory chip giant Samsung Electronics Co. which has joined the second round of Washington-led conference addressing chip shortage is expected to confirm $17 billion investment in the United States to expand foundry capacity in its facility in Texas and ride on the Biden administration’s $50 billion backing to upgrade U.S. chip technology.

The spending will likely go to migration to 3-nanometer (nm) based consignment chipmaking from 2023. The company’s facility in Austin currently produces chips on 14nm process technology.

Samsung joined a meeting led by U.S. Secretary Gina Raimondo on Wednesday along with a dozen of major chip clients of automobile and computer and other IT device producers and chipmakers, following the last video conference on semiconductor led by President Joe Biden last month.

Kim Ki-nam, vice chairman and head of device solutions at Samsung Electronics, was in town to represent the chipmaker and attend the meeting with the commerce secretary. Samsung Electronics which dominates the memory market may receive regular calls from Washington as Raimondo told reporters that “It may be that there is a role for the government to play, either in encouraging industry to do that or somehow helping to increase the transparency and information-sharing.”

Samsung Electronics’s investment would make up the bulk of near $40 billion investment package Korean business groups prepared, timed with President Moon Jae-in’s first summit with Biden on Friday.

LG Energy Solution, an electric vehicle battery maker spun off from LG Chem five months ago, will set up a plant in the U.S. with annual production capacity of 145 gigawatt-hour (GWh), which is enough to power more than 2 million pure EVs, by 2025. LG, together with its American partner General Motors, is currently building an EV battery plant in Ohio. The plant is scheduled to begin commercial production next year with annual capacity of 35GWh. LG is shouldering 1 trillion won ($887 million) for the 2.7 trillion won worth project.

SK Innovation is setting up a $5.3 billion EV battery joint venture with Ford Motor Co.

Hyundai Motor Co. Korea’s largest automaker, earlier on May 13, announced it will make $7.4 billion investment in the U.S. by 2025 for EV production expansion and other new mobility technology projects like autonomous driving.

By: DocMemory
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