(Reuters) – South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Tuesday it had not made a final decision on the location of a new $17 billion chip plant in the United States, after the Wall Street Journal reported it would be Taylor, Texas.
The WSJ said Texas Governor Greg Abbott was scheduled to make an “economic announcement” on Tuesday at 5 p.m. (2300 GMT).
A site in Texas’s Williamson County, near the city of Taylor, offered the best incentives package of the sites Samsung was considering, sources previously told Reuters. The world’s biggest memory chipmaker has said it is also considering sites in Arizona and New York.
The new plant is set to make advanced logic chips used to power mobile devices and autonomous vehicles, as the global auto industry faces a significant semiconductor shortage.
The factory would mark Samsung’s second chip factory in Texas, where it already manufactures chips at a plant in Austin.
Samsung is joining rivals TSMC and Intel in the race to expand chip contract manufacturing in the United States, where the sector is seen as an area of strategic competition with China. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has promised billions of dollars in federal funding to boost chip manufacturing and research to ensure it has an edge over China in advanced technologies and to address shortages for critical industries like autos.
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang in Seoul and Sabahatjahan Contractor in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen Coates)
