Recap: Micron last year announced plans to spend up to $100 billion to build a massive semiconductor manufacturing facility in Clay, a suburb of Syracuse in Upstate New York. Construction is expected to get under way in 2024 and should everything go according to plan, products could start rolling off the assembly line in the latter half of the decade. The Syracuse-area campus isn't expected to be fully built until 2045, however.
The chipmaker cited several reasons for selecting the site including its proximity to higher education institutions, reliable access to power and water, and a strong military population that aligns with its commitment to hiring veterans.
Micron will also benefit from the recently established CHIPS and Science Act designed to boost domestic chip manufacturing, and will receive $5.5 billion in subsidies from the state of New York.
Micron may have been the first to agree to build in the region, but it wasn't the first tech company offered the plot of land. Both Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Intel Corp. had been pitched the site but opted out after evaluating the area. TSMC decided to build in Arizona and Intel selected Ohio for its new factory.
Both companies declined to comment when reached by The Wall Street Journal. It's possible that the plot of land originally offered by Onondaga County was too small, which prompted officials to expand the site. But perhaps TSMC and Intel identified another issue with the region – that the talent pool needed to fill highly specialized tech jobs wasn't deep enough.
Micron is planning to eventually employ 9,000 tech workers at the Syracuse-area campus, and is taking steps to ensure the community will be ready to supply qualified workers when the time comes. Micron is dishing out $10 million to help K-12 schools boost their science, technology, engineering and math programs, and is also working with local training centers as well as community colleges and universities in the area to get students ready to work for them.
Syracuse University is also revamping its engineering degree, and has assigned each engineering student a career adviser, a student success adviser and a faculty adviser
Image credit: Fritzchens Fritz
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