Micron commits to $100 billion multi-decade investment in U.S. chip manufacturing

Yahoo Finance's Daniel Howley joins the Live show to discuss Micron's chip facility expansion.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, we're also watching shares of Micron after the chip maker committed up to $100 billion over the next 20 years to build a factory in upstate New York. This comes as Intel recently broke ground on a new $20 billion factory in Ohio. Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley has the details. That's a lot of money, Dan. A lot of money from Micron.

DAN HOWLEY: It's a lot of money. The $20 billion that they're initially going forward with is to build a plant in upstate New York just outside of Syracuse. This is obviously a big deal because a lot of the discussion for the CHIPS Act was bringing manufacturing back to the US, away from the likes of China, Taiwan, just so that when there is some kind of issue, if there is some kind of issue like we saw with the pandemic, we still have access to these kinds of chips. So they're going to have this $20 billion plant. But they also said that they're willing to pledge up to $100 billion as the years go on.

So this is a multi-decade kind of event that they're working through. And they're going to be building this plant specifically for memory chips. Don't forget Micron is a memory chip company. And though memory chips have been stung, you can see, obviously, their stock price down here. I mean, they're down along with the rest of the chip companies. Memory chips are still incredibly important. And as we put more chips into more devices, whether that's TVs, cars-- obviously, it's the big one that we talked about-- they're going to continue to see a need for these kinds of factories.

So getting them into the US-- big, big deal. Getting them into upstate New York-- even bigger deal. GlobalFoundries has a few factories up there. IBM used to have a big facility. But you know, it's still an area where chip making works. And it's-- just as an aside, you can't just build these factories anywhere. They need to be on seismically stable ground. They have to--

BRIAN SOZZI: That would help. That would help.

DAN HOWLEY: You can't build them-- if there's any kind of rumbling or movement in the factory when they're trying to make these chips, you just ruined an entire batch. So it's-- the [INAUDIBLE].

BRIAN SOZZI: Now I know why there's none on Long Island, so thank you.

DAN HOWLEY: Exactly, yeah.

BRAD SMITH: I was going to say, that's why it's not in Gowanus.

BRIAN SOZZI: Sand, yeah. No, it's not in Gowanus.

DAN HOWLEY: In Jersey, they just don't let you, so, you know.

BRAD SMITH: Exactly. All right, so when we think about the number of jobs that this is potentially going to create, like, what are we talking about?

DAN HOWLEY: They're talking about thousands of jobs up there. It could be as many as 10,000. As we see the progression go forward of these different stages-- again, this is the $20 billion at first, but they have pledged $100 billion. They're getting state incentives, obviously. That also is dependent on how many people they can hire, as well as different kind of environmental pledges to go forward.

But I think this is something where when it comes to a local economy, especially in an area like Syracuse, like upstate New York, where manufacturing used to be big, and then we saw it drop off, and obviously, the local economy suffered, is that this is a good chance for a lot of people to potentially get jobs or for people to move in and get these jobs and kind of revitalize certain areas. And we'll see this across the country, right? We have Intel talking about Ohio. We have Samsung and TSMC, I believe they're talking about plants in Arizona, in Texas.

So this is something that it's not just going to be a one-and-done kind of deal. This is something that I think we're going to see a lot more chip manufacturers come forward and say, we want to build. And this is-- I mean, part of this is because of the CHIPS Act, that there was a lot of pressure on companies to build here in the US. They got the incentives. And now they're basically starting to build this out.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah, no, this is good to see. I'm looking forward to going to that Ohio plant, walk around Pat Gelsinger's.

DAN HOWLEY: That would be wild.

BRIAN SOZZI: [INAUDIBLE]. That's going to be cool. I'm waiting for the invite. Dan Howley, thanks so much.