Commerce Department to take 4% equity stake in GlobalFoundries
GlobalFoundries plans to build two new semiconductor manufacturing facilities at its Malta, N.Y., headquarters, with Japan providing about $10 billion in funding for each fab under a U.S.-Japanese initiative tied to President Trump’s trade-and-investment agreement. The chipmaker said Wednesday that it expects to break ground on the first facility later this year, with the first fab projected to come online in 2029; a second $10 billion Japanese investment would fund a second fab at the same site. Total Japanese funding for the two facilities is up to $21 billion.
The Japanese investment stems from a broader $550 billion commitment Tokyo made under the trade deal reached last year to fund U.S. projects across energy, semiconductor manufacturing and shipbuilding, GlobalFoundries said.
Separately, the Commerce Department will receive about a 4% equity stake in GlobalFoundries under an arrangement distinct from the Japanese investment. The U.S. government already held roughly 1% of the chipmaker under an earlier CHIPS Act funding agreement reached earlier this year, lifting the federal interest in the company to about 5%.
GlobalFoundries and the Commerce Department also agreed to amend the chipmaker’s existing CHIPS Act award, reallocating $955 million to investments in silicon photonics, silicon-germanium and advanced packaging at facilities in Malta, N.Y., and Burlington, Vt. Each new fab is expected to add about 900,000 300-millimeter wafers of annual U.S. manufacturing capacity when fully operational, with production targeted at demand from automotive, industrial and connected-infrastructure markets, the company said.
GlobalFoundries shares rose 4.8% to $48.93 on the announcement, bringing the stock’s year-to-date gain to 41%.