GlobalFoundries (NASDAQ: GFS), the contract chipmaker, said today it has been selected to run two new fabs at Malta, New York, under a US-Japan initiative providing up to $21bn of funding. The shares were up 4.5% on the day.
GFS was quoted at $48.805 at about 7.20pm London time, against Tuesday’s close of $46.70. That is a delayed quote with the US session still open, so the figure will change. GFS trades on Nasdaq, not the London Stock Exchange.
GF will be technology provider and operator of the fabs, a fab being a chip factory. Japan provides the investment; the release does not say GF funds them. An initial investment of about $10bn will accelerate a new fab expected online in 2029, with groundbreaking planned later this year.
A second fab would get about $10bn more, but the release says that money “would fund” it, so it is not committed, and no date is given. The $21bn is a ceiling, not a firm total.
The first fab is expected to add about 900,000 300mm wafers a year when fully operational, the standard large silicon discs chips are cut from. A second would add about the same. For scale, the headline funding is roughly three times GF’s 2025 revenue of $6.791bn, though the money is Japan’s, not GF’s.
Two other items sit alongside. In a separate agreement, the US Commerce Department will receive equity in GF of about 4%, and $955m of GF’s existing CHIPS Act award, a US grant for domestic chipmaking, is reallocated to silicon photonics, silicon-germanium and advanced packaging.
GF chief executive Tim Breen framed the project this way:
This is a bold new initiative for semiconductor manufacturing, bringing together the United States and Japan with GF’s differentiated technology and decades of manufacturing expertise to accelerate trusted capacity in New York
Tim Breen, CEO, GlobalFoundries
Renesas chief executive Hidetoshi Shibata, whose Japanese chipmaker is a GF customer, said it is planning around the new capacity as an extension of its own production footprint.
The shares remain about 29% below their $68.97 close on the 10th of July, though 14% above the September low close of $42.75 on the 15th of September.