Following talks with some of the world’s largest chipmakers, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Thursday that Micron will invest $3.6 billion in Japan to create next-generation semiconductors.
Kishida is attempting to boost the domestic chip sector after the epidemic and the ongoing US-China dispute over advanced technology highlighted flaws in global semiconductor supply networks.
Senior executives from Taiwan’s TSMC, South Korea’s Samsung, and US titans Intel, Micron, and IBM attended the Kishida meeting on Thursday.
“Micron expects to invest up to 500 billion yen ($3.6 billion) in 1-gamma process technology over the next few years, with close support from the Japanese government,” the firm said in a statement, referring to the production of advanced DRAM memory chips.
The investment would “enable the next wave of end-to-end technology innovation such as rapidly emerging generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications”.
Micron also stated that it would be the first company to bring extreme ultraviolet (EUV) chip manufacturing to Japan.
The technology was hailed as the “most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing process in the world.”
There was no quick confirmation of what kind of aid Japan might provide, while Bloomberg News reported earlier that Kishida was planning to give Micron $1.5 billion in incentives.
Japan has already agreed to invest $500 million in a new project to design and manufacture next-generation chips in the country.
