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Intel delays $28B Ohio chip fabs to 2030
- tyleo 2y agoThe real question is whether the fabs will ever come, or if they will be “too little too late”. As a former resident of Columbus, I’m skeptical of the Ohio government and Intel’s ability to get a value-positive operation running here. So much of the Ohio population is hostile to the very acts like CHIPS which are funding this project and Ohio infrastructure generally. I have that on account of a couple civil engineers in Ohio who are friends and family.
- huijzer 2y agoWhy are they hostile to the plans?
- freen 2y ago“Not invented here” syndrome. The “Liberals” did it. Kill Obamacare but don’t you dare touch my Affordable Care Act healthcare coverage. Etc etc etc.
- mikeyouse 2y agoMostly because “China bad” and “Biden bad”.. same thing happening in Michigan. There were organized protests to stop Chinese and Taiwanese companies from building billion dollar battery facilities in poor rural areas. Just the dumbest timeline. https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2023/04/hundreds-rally-at-michigan-horse-farm-to-oppose-gotion-battery-plant.html?outputType=amp https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2023/04/hundreds-rally...
- ihsw 2y ago[dead]
- roland35 2y agoWe certainly have our share of dumdums here in Ohio but I think the actual leadership is fairly reasonable, and they do really like $$ and wouldn't do anything to jeopardize investment. Now, I am not sure how long we'll have "the old guard" type guys like dewine, so this comment might not age well!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mistersquid 2y ago> We certainly have our share of dumdums here in Ohio but I think the actual leadership is fairly reasonable, and they do really like $$ and wouldn't do anything to jeopardize investment. Mike DeWine is governor. On the Federal level, Ohio has Representative Jim Jordan and the current VP of the US, J.D. Vance. How do you measure that “the actual leadership [of Ohio] is fairly reasonable”?
- ceejayoz 2y agoDeWine, to his credit, has been notably independent on a number of fronts, from COVID restrictions to anti-trans legislation.
- roland35 2y agoYeah it's a sad state of affairs in general I agree with you there. Overall I'd say our clowns in Ohio are probably about average if you judge against the national landscape.
- EasyMark 2y agoThe republicans in Ohio will do what the republican in Washington are doing right now. Mark my words, whatever the King says goes, unless there is a national disaster or he has a complete dementia break down in public. Luckily, it's all built around his cult of personality and falls apart when he's no longer viable.
- mikeyouse 2y agoI don’t think it’s a coincidence that Intel announced the delay to the next presidential term.. The current administration is also hostile to the CHIPS act.. they’ve fired many of the administrators (the act is new enough that there were many probationary employers supporting it) and have told already-approved recipients that they are going to renegotiate the agreements. I’ve never seen such a self destructive administration..
- BoxFour 2y ago> I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Intel announced the delay to the next presidential election year.. The next presidential election is in 2028, not 2030
- Aurornis 2y agoElection in 2028, next president takes office in 2029, realistically 2030 is the earliest the CHIPS act and staff could be rebuilt. The people overseeing the CHIPS act have mostly been fired or flagged for firing. Many of them were in their “probationary” period because they were recent hires. The CHIPS act can’t be instantly restarted when the next president takes office. It has to be rebuilt. It has basically been sabotaged.
- jorvi 2y agoThat's one of the most frustrating things about the wrecking ball far right administrations going through America and parts of Europe right now. They're causing damage that will take 5-10 years to fix, so even if we get more sane administrations, the public will complain "why aren't we seeing any improvements" because all they can accomplish at first is cleaning out the rubble. Worst of all, it could become cycle. Trump / DOGE is basically doing a wholesale cleanse of left-leaning public sector employees at all levels, replacing them with yes men and cronies. A new administration will have to revert that, meaning firing and hiring and training people yet again. And an administration after that might try do undo that. What a quagmire. In general it's a classic that left-leaning governments fix various policy and economic problems, which often carries big cost, which gets them voted out, and then the fruits of that labor are claimed by / wrongfully attributed to rightist administrations.
- jmclnx 2y agoIt has been in the news that Trump did or about to cancel Biden's Chips act. So without those funds there is no incentive for Intel to build the fab, especially with how unstable this admin is when it comes to policies. You do not know what will happen one day to the next. I am sure we will see more of this, I thought I saw the company in Taiwan (forgot the name) is scaling down or maybe cancelling their fab in AZ. Probably for the same "real" reason as Intel.
- alephnerd 2y agoBefore people jump onto talking about partisan politics, the big issue driving this right now is the fact that Intel is mulling splitting their foundary business from their chip design business and selling both off to outside parties [0] The Intel fabs in Ohio were at the early stages, and would be a significant capex hit that could scuttle any M&A opportunities in the pipeline. [0] - https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-intel-deals-that-would-split-storied-chip-maker-966b143b https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-intel-de...
- Frieren 2y ago> Before people jump onto talking about partisan politics It is not "partisan" politics, it is money politics. No money, no fab. Intel cannot commit to anything with a fluctuating future that changes each minute. Exclusive: Trump prepares to change US CHIPS Act conditions, sources say https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-prepares-change-us-chips-act-conditions-sources-say-2025-02-13/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-prepares-change-us-...
- alephnerd 2y agoNo buyer will be prepared to buy a BU that has an additional $28B liability on the books. It would make it completely untenable for any buyer to acquire the Foundry BU.
- dmix 2y ago> Four sources with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters that the White House is concerned about many of the terms underpinning the $39 billion Chips and Science Act industry subsidies. > Those encompass additional clauses, including requirements added into contracts by the administration of President Joe Biden, including that recipients must use unionized labor to build factories and help provide affordable childcare for factory workers. Still sounds very megacorp friendly
- Aurornis 2y ago> Before people jump onto talking about partisan politics The current administration has gutted the CHIPS act staff and is unpredictably changing the terms of the deals. It’s not “partisan politics” to point out the simple facts about what the current administration is doing.
- linwangg 2y agoThis delay makes me wonder if Intel is struggling more than we think. With TSMC expanding in Arizona (despite their own delays), and Nvidia dominating the AI chip market, can Intel afford to push back its U.S. expansion? If the CHIPS Act incentives aren't enough to keep them on schedule, what's the real bottleneck—funding, demand, or execution?
- alephnerd 2y agoIntel is mulling a breakup of the Foundry BU from the Chip Design BU and selling both to outside bidders [0] A $28B liability would destroy the ability for any buyer to acquire the Foundry IDM portion of the breakup. [0] - https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-intel-deals-that-would-split-storied-chip-maker-966b143b https://www.wsj.com/tech/broadcom-tsmc-eye-possible-intel-de...
- a2tech 2y agoTrump is messing with the chips act. It’s safe to say that anything that was operating under it is on pause.
- snailmailstare 2y agoCarrot or stick might be all the same to TSMC, but Intel shouldn't have such a huge amount of its fab capacity within hotel tariff.
- gfkclzhzo 2y agoThis might be a response to the functional repeal of the CHIPS act. https://www.techspot.com/news/106925-chips-act-likely-fizzle-out-wake-federal-employee.html https://www.techspot.com/news/106925-chips-act-likely-fizzle... Congressional appropriations don't matter when the president can fire staff and stop payments.
- SamuelAdams 2y agoSo will Intel need to return some of the 7.9 billion in federal grants as a result of this delay? It looks like 1.5 billion of that was already awarded as recently as last November. https://www.industryweek.com/semiconductors/article/55246295/intel-commerce-department-finalize-79-billion-chip-making-grant https://www.industryweek.com/semiconductors/article/55246295... https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/politics/ohio-politics/ohios-intel-plant-moving-forward-with-long-awaited-chips-act-funding https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/politics/ohio-politics/o...
- Tostino 2y agoTrump made claims he wants to cancel the chips act. I have a feeling that has something to do with the delay.
- okonomiyaki3000 2y agoSo they think they can wait till 2030 when a different guy will be in the White House? They better think again.
- micromacrofoot 2y agoor they hope it's a bad look for "america first" and the delay prevents it from being cancelled
- klysm 2y agoThey can make a bet on it, same way Apple is making “investments” with continent timing.
- numpad0 2y agoI think they think, it, strategic high tech investment in the US, is not worth doing. At least until 2030s.
- imgabe 2y agoBecause this is what happens. You try to bribe companies and they just take the money and say “oh, yeah fuck off”. Just like all the telecom companies took billions of dollars to build high speed internet and did jack shit. Instead impose tariffs and make building in the US mandatory.
- meltyness 2y agoIt's a bad news on Friday kind of economy out there.
- mrtksn 2y agoWhat happens if the EU-USA relationship deteriorates to the point that EU doesn't sell lithography machines and other equipment to the US, doesn't accept imports made with chips from USA and requires these things be made in China, Korea or Japan? The reason I'm curious about this is that in my understanding for a fab to become financially viable it needs to produce grotesque amount of chips. Can America have state of the art fabs for a market of 340M people if the world becomes partitioned in the upcoming years? In Europe that was the main problem, people like to say that Europe lost on tech because of regulations but Europe lost on tech before EU become a thing, they simply didn't have a large enough local market for electronic components. Europeans got out of this market because it wasn't profitable, not because they couldn't figure out transistors etc.
- alephnerd 2y ago> EU doesn't sell lithography machines ASML's EUV Lithography IP is provided on contract by LLNL, and much of that IP is owned and implemented by Cymer LLC, ASML's US subsidiary. And it's individual nation states (in this case Netherlands) that can even make decisions on export controls, not the EU. In most cases, the Netherlands has largely been aligned with the US, and knows how to manage Trump thanks to Mark Rutte. EU Member states zealously guard their sovereignty in defense/NatSec and foreign relations matters, so it's less a question about the EU and more a question about Netherlands/France/Germany/<insert EU state here> > requires these things be made in China, Korea or Japan Most of the supply chain is already dependent on Japan and Korea and has been for decades. European players have largely been limited to legacy node fabrication chains because of the heavy focus on the automotive industry in Europe and the capital crunch during the Eurozone recession. That said, there are a decent number of European suppliers (eg. Merck for chemicals, ASML for EUV Lithography, Zeiss for optics, etc).
- mrtksn 2y agoI get that but just because they use licensed IP doesn't mean that they have to sell it to the USA. >And it's individual nation states (in this case Netherlands) that makes this decision, not the EU. That's the current state of affairs, it doesn't have to be the same in the upcoming months or years because "decades are happening in weeks" lately. The sovereignty stuff is what kept EU from becoming like USA but things are on move now. Check the approval ratings and trust of Europeans about EU and their local government and you'll see that Europeans tend to trust EU much more than the national government. EU is actually very popular with the general public, its the far-right and the far left that demonize it(they see it as an obstacle towards libertarian utopia or communism). Also, what if they just don't care about the license or replace the licensed IP with something from Korea/Japan? What if they just clandestinely sell those to China?
- buyucu 2y agoIs Intel going to be around by 2030?
- kragen 2y agoNote that 02030 is three years after the 02027 date for which the USG has been trying to prepare for the reunification of China: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/05/07/how-dc-became-obsessed-with-a-potential-2027-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan/ https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/05/07/how-dc-becam... In particular Arsenal One, also in Ohio, is trying hard to hit that date for mass production of slaughterbots: https://law-in-action.com/2024/08/30/who-is-ready-for-war-with-china-in-2027-venture-capitalists/ https://law-in-action.com/2024/08/30/who-is-ready-for-war-wi... excerpted from WSJ article https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tech-bros-are-betting-they-can-help-win-a-war-with-china/ar-AA1oy4uV https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/tech-bros-are-bett...
- api 2y agoWhy is TSMC operational already while Intel is stuck with a failing timeline? Is Intel really that far out of it? I guess that’s what a decade plus of near monopoly dominance does to you.
- kragen 2y agoPeople in the US really have a hard time hearing this: It's probably because TSMC is in China. They're across the straits from the world center of the electronics industry, instead of across the Pacific, and they can hire the sort of people who pay private tutors for their kids instead of the sort of people who refuse to wear facemasks in a pandemic of a deadly respiratory infection. TSMC executives in Arizona have been consistently amazed at the laziness and ignorance of the workforce there. 60 years ago the US had the human capital and industrial base to found Intel. Now it probably doesn't have the human capital and industrial base to sustain it.
- api 2y agoI meant TSMC in Arizona, and the company is based in Taiwan. I was alluding to this likely being a management problem at Intel.
- kragen 2y agoYes, as I said, the company is based in China. Maybe you're trying to say Taiwan isn't in China because it isn't governed by the CPC, which makes as much sense as saying Switzerland isn't in Europe because it isn't part of the EU. Even if it were correct, it's irrelevant to the advantages I'm talking about. TSMC in Arizona is implementing fabrication processes brought to production readiness by the hard work and expertise of people at TSMC in China, which can draw on the whole Chinese electronics ecosystem that doesn't exist in the US anymore.
- ksec 2y ago>which makes as much sense as saying Switzerland isn't in Europe because it isn't part of the EU. Because China is a country and not a region? Would you put Canada as America simply because they are all in North America?
- Drunkfoowl 2y ago[dead]
- duxup 2y agoIs this related to Trumps apparent opposition to the CHIPS act?
- dtquad 2y agoOne thing that will make the re-industrialization of the West fail is if it turns into a rural/flyover state development program. Chinese manufacturing is efficient because of the tight supply chain integration and centralization that has emerged in the big cities of the Pearl River Delta Area. The decades old dream to manufacture cutting edge chips in Europe has also repeatedly failed because it keeps being turned into job development programs in Eastern Germany.
- addicted 2y agoYup. The problem with democracies in the West is that they keep trying to make unsustainable places sustainable. China essentially says “here’s where all the talent is and where the talent is willing to move to…let’s focus there”. Because of policy reasons Texas, for example, has been able to kind of grow, but it would be much better if the likes of California and New York fixed their bad policies so they could grow instead, as the potential is much greater.
- jrsj 2y agoThe delays have nothing to do with it being in Ohio, and the CHIPS Act didn’t dictate where these would be built. Intel picked the site, just like TSMC and others picked theirs. Cost of land, energy, labor, etc all taken into account. The “flyover” states are the more cost effective place to do these things. With Ohio specifically it’s being built just outside of a city too. Yes, we have those here. It’s actually not just one big state of a bunch of rural hicks demanding handouts from the government.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- amelius 2y agoMakes sense to wait out this administration.
- cletus 2y ago[flagged]
- marcosdumay 2y agoOn #6, that's an individual income tax (or capital gain tax, depends on how you define things). Corporate income tax is the one that is applied independently of the money being invested on the corporation or distributed. I'm don't think you should subsidize reinvesting in huge companies anyway. What do you expect to gain from them becoming larger? It's much better (for society) to let them send the money back to shareholders so they can invest on something else.
- cletus 2y agoReinvesting in the company is the one thing we should absolutely subsidize. That goes to wages, capital expenditure and other measures to sustain and grow the company. Paying out dividends and doing share buybacks just strips the company for cash until there's nothing of value left. It's why entshittification is a thing.
- marcosdumay 2y agoTreating all wages as expenses seems fine to me. But have you noticed that large companies just stop growing at some point and it doesn't matter how much money you pour at them? That is, unless they use the extra capital to buy legally-enforced monopolies, or bribe regulators out of their way. And no, enshitification is a thing because people want those companies to grow and grow, and keep growing. Some times even after they have the majority of humanity as customers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jajko 2y agoGood points but AFAIK bank loans from 2008 were paid back with interests, those were definitely not some free money. I would focus on root causes instead of populists shallow statements like that - too few regulations and oversight that allowed creation of securities that should never have existed in first place. No industry will self-regulate, as you write the lure of short term bonuses for execs is too high and punishment for failures are non existent. I expect current US admin will make this even worse, greed and short term profit seems to be the only focus.
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoStop funding these broken and dying companies with grants, they need to die off
- jrsj 2y agoI don’t know what news you’ve all been reading, but I don’t see anything about Trump cancelling the CHIPS Act. The 2 main things I’ve seen is trying to get TSMC to take over Intels manufacturing, and wanting to remove things like union labor requirements from the CHIPS Act.
- dev1ycan 2y agoI love how I Was downvoted last year when I pointed out their plans were unrealistic, Americans will keep being delusional over intel, it's a failing company that wasted 10 years with a monopoly in CPUs until AMD caught up, company leadership should completely change
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoOfficial Intel post: https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/ohio-one-construction-timeline-update https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/ohio-one-construction-t...