Amkor has broken ground on a new semiconductor packaging and test campus in Peoria, Arizona, marking a rare domestic expansion in one of the industry’s most critical and capacity-constrained areas. The site, which covers multiple buildings and up to 750,000 square feet of cleanroom, is scheduled to begin production in early 2028 following completion of the first factory in mid-2027.
The facility has already secured Apple and Nvidia as lead customers and will handle chip packaging for Apple silicon, which will be fabricated nearby at TSMC’s Arizona fabs. The U.S. Commerce Department previously awarded Amkor up to $400 million in proposed CHIPS Act funding for the project, calling it the largest outsourced advanced packaging facility in America. The initial phase carries a $2 billion investment, but Arizona officials say Amkor’s footprint could eventually grow to a $7 billion campus with as many as 3,000 jobs.
Less than an hour southeast, TSMC is ramping up a three-fab complex with its own CHIPS funding. The company’s Arizona roadmap calls for 4nm production in 2025, followed by 3nm in 2028 and 2nm-class A16 (1.6nm-class) before the decade’s end. The Commerce Department has been explicit about the link between TSMC’s wafer output and the need for a domestic packaging partner, describing Amkor’s project as a key step toward end-to-end U.S. chip manufacturing. Although Intel operates its Foveros packaging hub across the state line in New Mexico, it is also expanding its Arizona wafer capacity with two new fabs in Chandler, also using CHIPS Act funding.
Advanced packaging is playing an increasingly important role with the rise of HBM and multi-die architectures. U.S. officials have identified packaging capacity as a critical vulnerability in the “fragile [chips] supply chain,” particularly for AI accelerators that rely on complex integration and fast interconnects. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has singled out 2.5D packaging as a major bottleneck for AI chips and GPUs, citing supply constraints that have delayed product launches and limited shipments.
Amkor’s Arizona campus is designed to address that gap directly, offering a domestic site for high-density integration and positioning itself as a key link between U.S.-based wafer production and finished AI systems. The project will draw on a workforce pipeline from local universities and marks a major re-entry into U.S. manufacturing for Amkor, which is headquartered in Arizona but does the bulk of its production overseas.
