The South Korean company is leasing land at Austin, Texas, after initially eyeing a different area
Samsung will create 2,000 jobs in Texas with $17 billion chip factory
Samsung Electronics will create 2,000 new jobs with a $17bn (£13.3bn) investment in a Texas semiconductor plant under construction near San Antonio, Texas, it announced on Tuesday.
The South Korean company signed a lease agreement with the city of Austin in return for conditional approvals for the operation.
Samsung said the 1.2m sq ft plant will be the world’s largest memory chip factory when it opens in 2024. It already employs more than 6,000 people in San Antonio, as well as 15,000 in Austin.
“The availability of an experienced, highly skilled workforce and economic incentives made Texas the ideal location for this capital investment,” said Kenny Chan, president of Samsung Semiconductor Americas.
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Samsung will lease a 175-acre site in San Antonio’s North Travis Square district for the factory. The new facility will produce 512Gb of eDRAM, or dynamic random access memory, which is used to store information on digital electronics. The 512Gb chips are almost three times as powerful as most memory chips currently on the market, Samsung said.
Samsung previously said it had agreed to build a chip factory in Austin and to spend $17bn, but it was never clear where exactly.
The company initially had its sights set on a site north of the city of Austin, where it would create 15,000 jobs, according to the local newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman.
However, the Texas Enterprise Fund, which is backed by the state, kicked in more than $2.5bn to support Samsung’s bid for the new chip factory, the Statesman reported.