Schumer says Boise’s Micron will get billions in U.S. subsidies. Here’s the latest

Micron is slated to receive $6.1 billion from the federal government to help pay for its chip-making plants under construction in Boise and New York state.

The award, while not official, is expected to be announced the week of April 22, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, confirmed the announcement in an interview with the Associated Press.

The funding comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, signed by President Joe Biden in August 2022, which authorized government subsidies for semiconductor companies to expand domestically. Micron filed applications for the Boise plant, and the other planned in upstate New York, with the U.S. Department of Commerce a year later.

A Micron Technology Inc. employee moves through a clean room at a fab on the memory-chip maker’s Southeast Boise campus.

A spokesperson for Micron told the Idaho Statesman on Thursday that the company is not yet ready to say how it will be divided between the two projects. “Under the confidentiality requirements associated with our CHIPS application submitted in August 2023, we are not able to comment,” the spokesperson said.

But Micron’s “mega fab” planned for Clay, New York, just outside of Syracuse, will dwarf the one being built at its headquarters campus in Southeast Boise. Fab is short for semiconductor fabrication.

The New York fab is expected to cost $100 billion over the next two decades. Micron has said it will be the largest ever built in the U.S., and that it will generate nearly 50,000 jobs, including 9,000 high-paying jobs at Micron itself.

The $15 billion fab in Boise will create more than 17,000 jobs, including 2,000 at Micron, according to the company.

Micron is Idaho’s largest for-profit employer, with more than 5,000 employees, according to the Idaho Department of Labor. The company has multiple fabs and related operations overseas. Micron says it employs 44,000 people worldwide.

It once made memory chips in Boise but ended manufacturing here in 2009. The headquarters campus has evolved to become the company’s primary research-and-development center and is staffed by scientists and engineers from around the world.

Micron is the only U.S. manufacturer of dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, used in smartphones, computers and other devices to temporarily store data as they function. It also makes flash memory, which is used in similar devices to store data permanently.

A Micron Technology Inc. executive’s face is reflected in a 12-inch wafer from which memory chips are cut.

A Statesman call to Schumer’s office was not immediately returned.

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