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Micron lifts U.S. spending to $250 billion — company takes $500 million position in America's only 300 mm wafer plant
Micron has said it will invest up to $3 billion in the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, with $500 million of that going to GlobalWafers as strategic financing for its 300 mm raw silicon wafer plant in Sherman, Texas, alongside a 10-year agreement giving Micron access to that plant's wafer output. In a separate announcement, the memory maker raised its planned U.S. spending to more than $250 billion through 2035, up from $200 billion, and confirmed the first concrete pour at its Clay, New York campus more than a quarter ahead of schedule.
Sherman is the sole operating facility in the U.S. capable of producing advanced 300 mm raw silicon wafers, the substrate on which every leading-edge DRAM, NAND, and logic die is built. GlobalWafers opened the plant in May last year and holds a $406 million CHIPS Act award covering the site and a silicon-on-insulator facility in St. Peters, Missouri. The 142-acre campus is designed for up to six phases, one of which is running. Micron's other American sites draw their wafers from Japan, Taiwan, Germany, and South Korea; Shin-Etsu, SUMCO, GlobalWafers, Siltronic, and SK Siltron together control the overwhelming majority of global 300 mm supply, making raw silicon the most concentrated layer in the chip space.
Doris Hsu, chairperson and CEO of GlobalWafers, set out her terms for building phase two at Sherman during the plant's opening last year, telling Reuters the company needed profitability at the first two phases, customers willing to sign long-term contracts, reasonable pricing, prepayments, and government support. Thursday's announcement supplies most of that list in a single transaction.
Wafer suppliers spent the 2023-2024 downcycle protecting margins rather than adding capacity, and SUMCO is winding down 200mm production at Miyazaki this year while holding the line on new 300mm expansion. Customers, not suppliers, are therefore now underwriting the capacity. The last time the industry did this, during the 2017-2018 megacycle, chipmakers signed prepaid long-term agreements that turned into liabilities when pricing rolled over.
Silicon wafer shipments reached 3,275 million square inches in Q1 2026, up 13.1% year over year, with SEMI.org attributing the growth to AI data center demand across advanced logic, memory, and power devices. Micron's first new Idaho fab, ID1, is expected to begin wafer output in mid-2027, and production at Clay isn't expected until around 2030. The company began making 1-alpha DRAM at its Manassas, Virginia fab in May.
Micron told investors last December that it can serve only half to two-thirds of customer demand, and nothing announced Thursday changes the supply position of DRAM this year or next.
Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
