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The Biden administration has now invested in all five of the world’s major chipmakers with its latest Chips and Science Act funding recipient.
South Korea-based SK Hynix will receive up to $450 million in proposed direct funding from the Chips Act, as well as $500 million in proposed loans, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced Tuesday. The proposed funding will build on SK Hynix’s $3.87 billion investment in a high-bandwidth memory (HBM) advanced chip-packaging and research and development facility in West Lafayette, Indiana. The plant, which will package memory chips for artificial intelligence products, is expected to create 1,000 new jobs.
“We are moving forward with the construction of the Indiana production base, working with the State of Indiana, Purdue University and our U.S. business partners to ultimately supply leading-edge AI memory products from West Lafayette,” SK Hynix chief executive Kwak Noh-Jung, said in a statement. “We look forward to establishing a new hub for AI technology, creating skilled jobs for Indiana and helping build a more robust, resilient supply chain for the global semiconductor industry.”
SK Hynix has a partnership with chipmaking leader Nvidia to supply it with HBM chips, which, combined with Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), are used for training leading generative AI models.
In July, SK Hynix reported its highest quarterly profit in six years for the second quarter of 2024, driven by AI chip demand. The chipmaker, which is one of the top HBM chip producers in the world, reported second-quarter revenues of 16.4 trillion won ($11.9 billion), and an operating profit of 5.5 trillion won ($4 billion). Second-quarter revenue was at an “all-time high,” and operating profit hit 5 trillion won ($3.6 billion) for the first time since 2018 “during the semiconductor super boom,” SK Hynix said.