The state of Texas has awarded a $34 million grant to Texas Instruments for an expansion of the company’s semiconductor wafer production site in Richardson, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office announced Thursday.
Texas Instruments’ Richardson facility produces 300 mm wafers — or the largest type of the silicon wafers used to create the semiconductors that serve as the building blocks of modern electronic devices ranging from medical devices to the computer chips powering AI. Texas Instruments’ Richardson production site, which ranks among the most advanced semiconductor facilities in the world, consists of two connected fabrication plants, or “fabs”: The first began production in 2009, and the second began production in 2022.
In a statement, Mohammad Yunus, a TI executive, emphasized the company’s commitment to Texas and praised the new state grant.
“This award recognizes the investment we have made in our Richardson semiconductor manufacturing facility and reinforces our commitment to producing the foundational technology that is vital for nearly every electronic device, now and for decades to come,” he said.
The $34 million state grant will support TI’s tool installations at the Richardson facility, the company told The Dallas Morning News by email. The facility “continues to ramp to full production,” the company noted: TI has previously said that the two Richardson plants “will manufacture more than 100 million analog chips every day that will go into electronics everywhere.”
The announcement of the new state grant also referenced a $700 million investment in “expanded capacity and technology” at the facility, although it was not immediately clear what that entails, and TI did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The News seeking clarification.
The state grant comes through the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund, a program created by lawmakers in 2023 to encourage the state’s burgeoning tech and semiconductor industry. The fund has since received nearly $1 billion in appropriations; earlier this month, it was also used to award $24 million to FormFactor, a California-based semiconductor technology company that’s building a new manufacturing facility in Farmers Branch.
Abbott and other politicians have regularly praised the grants as a means to help fortify the state’s status as a technology leader.
“Texas is where the integrated circuit was born and where the future is forged,” the governor said in a statement on Thursday. “Texas Instruments is a global trailblazer, and this expansion of their historic, long-term investment in our great state advances Texas’ leadership in semiconductor manufacturing.”
Texas Instruments, which traces its history to the 1930s, has since grown into one of the largest semiconductor producers in the world and a major economic driver for North Texas, with locations in Dallas, Richardson and Sherman. The company unveiled its Sherman semiconductor manufacturing facility — part of a planned $30 billion Grayson County “megasite” — at a ribbon cutting ceremony in December.