GlobalWafers may invest additional US$4 billion in Texas

Taipei, May 16 (CNA) Taiwan-based GlobalWafers Co., the world's third largest silicon wafer supplier, said Friday that it intends to invest an additional US$4 billion in Texas to meet client demand and align itself with the Trump administration's "Made in the U.S.A." policy.

GlobalWafers Chairperson Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) made the announcement in an online news conference Thursday (U.S. time) after the company officially opened its first 12-inch silicon wafer plant in the United States in more than two decades in Sherman, Texas.

"On the three-year anniversary of our decision to build GWA [GlobalWafers America], I am pleased to announce GlobalWafers' intention to expand our current U.S. investment by another US$4 billion to reach US$7.5 billion," Hsu said.

But Hsu said the US$4 billion in new investment would not be made until the first and second phases of the project show profitability and the company is sure it will secure long-term orders from clients.

GlobalWafers' initial US$3.5 billion investment, launched in 2022, covers the first two phases of the Texas project. The first phase was the recently completed 12-inch silicon wafer plant.

The US$4 billion would cover the next two phases, after which the complex would produce a projected 1 million wafers a month, according to the company.

The Texas compound has a total area of 142 acres to accommodate six phases of development, Hsu said.

With the completion of the first phase of development, shipments at the end of March began contributing a small fraction of the company's sales in the first quarter, Hsu said, with sales from the U.S. market expected to grow quarter by quarter this year.

Global Wafers will also likely receive the first batch of subsidies worth US$406 million under the country's CHIPS and Science Act for the first phase of the project from the U.S. Department of Commerce in the first half of 2025, she said.

The 12-inch silicon-on-insulator ("SOI") wafers rolled out from the Sherman plant are being shipped primarily to the defense and aerospace industries, the company said.

Hsu said, meanwhile, that the additional investment in Texas would not squeeze GlobalWafers' funding for expansion in other areas around the world.

While the Texas facility will book higher depreciation costs, its operational costs are expected to be lower than GlobaWafers' plants elsewhere, she said, in part because electricity rates in Texas are only half the power rates in Asia.

Hsu cautioned, however, that the global silicon wafer market is faced with many uncertainties as many of clients have remained cautious about the second half of 2025 due to the Trump administration's haphazard tariff policies.