Singapore Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong (centre) at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility on Jan 27. -- ST PHOTO: GIN TAY
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): Memory chip giant Micron Technology is building a US$24 billion (S$30.5 billion - RM95 billion) plant here to ramp up its production of semiconductors as booming artificial intelligence (AI) demand causes an unprecedented shortage of hardware powering data centres.
The plant, located within the American company’s existing manufacturing complex in Woodlands, will provide an additional 65,000 sq m of cleanroom space when it becomes operational in the second half of 2028.
It will produce NAND flash memory chips used in solid-state drives that support data centres, offering faster access speeds than hard disk drives.
Micron’s investment in the new plant will be made over 10 years.
It brings the firm’s total investment since it started operating in the Republic in 1998 to more than US$60 billion, which includes a US$7 billion facility it announced in 2025 focused on increasing the output of high-bandwidth memory chips.
The new NAND facility will create around 1,600 jobs with roles across engineering and operations. Together with the high-bandwidth memory chip plant, around 3,000 new jobs will come about.
Singapore is Micron’s main production base for NAND flash memory chips. The chips constituted a record US$2.7 billion, or about 20 per cent, of the firm’s revenue in the first quarter of its 2026 fiscal year.
The country is also the second largest site after Taiwan for Micron’s high-bandwidth memory chip assembly operation.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong, who attended the ground-breaking ceremony for the new facility on Jan 27, said geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions and rapid technological change have reshaped how global companies approach investing, production, innovation and managing risk across complex supply chains.
“This is where Singapore positions itself. We aim to be a trusted hub where globally leading companies can anchor critical activities with confidence, even as conditions remain fluid globally,” Mr Gan said.
“Micron’s investment in this new wafer fabrication facility is significant not only because of its scale, but because it anchors Singapore’s role in advanced NAND flash memory manufacturing,” he added.
Mr Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief executive of Micron Technology, said: “As AI continues to scale, memory and storage are no longer just components within a system. They have become strategic assets that absolutely enable the potential of AI.”
He added that AI-fuelled demand for memory chips is unprecedented, pointing to a shortage the firm expects will last beyond 2026.
In December, Micron said it will stop selling memory chips to consumers as it doubles down on advanced semiconductors used in data centres.
The NAND chip facility will be the first double-storey chip manufacturing plant in the Republic, which Mr Mehrotra said would maximise land efficiency while providing additional cleanroom space.
It will increase the amount of cleanroom space Micron has in Singapore, required for the production of cutting-edge chips, by 50 per cent.
Demand for memory chips has surged as the training of generative AI applications creates volumes of data, boosting the need for storage.
Beyond data centres, developments in autonomous vehicle and humanoid technologies have also brought about the need for advanced sensory processing that the chips can provide.
Micron is currently meeting only half to two-thirds of client demand, Mr Manish Bhatia, the company’s executive vice-president of global operations, told The Straits Times.
He said this is driving clients to negotiate multi-year agreements, instead of the usual one-year contracts, to lock down a supply of critical chips.
“Never ever before have I seen this. Many key customers are seeing that the gap (between supply and demand) could continue, because their demand could go up,” he added.
Mr Gan said AI is an enduring and powerful growth driver for the Singapore semiconductor industry, while adding that the NAND plant will create good jobs.
He noted that Micron has been a close partner to many local educational institutions, including all the polytechnics, the Institute of Technical Education and most recently, the National University of Singapore’s College of Design and Engineering.
“These partnerships will open up opportunities for students to participate in internships, mentorship and hands-on learning experiences at Micron,” Mr Gan said.
Mr Bhatia said that students taking part in internship, apprentice and training programmes are given the opportunity to eventually take on roles in the company.
Jobs on offer will include researchers tasked to develop the processes needed to manufacture next-generation memory chips, as well as engineers supporting the operations of the upcoming Singapore plants.
Micron’s expansion is also opening up new opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The firm has worked with Techfox, a Singapore AI, Internet of Things and robotics solutions provider, to customise autonomous mobile robots for its factory floor. The partnership also saw the robots being integrated with smart racks and other robots.
Singapore is a critical node in the global semiconductor supply chain, contributing one in 10 chips and one-fifth of global semiconductor equipment production, the Economic Development Board (EDB) said on Jan 27.
In the past two years, it has attracted more than $18 billion of investments for semiconductor research and development and manufacturing, EDB said.
The semiconductor industry contributes close to 7 per cent of Singapore’s gross domestic product and employs more than 35,000 people, it added. -- The Straits Times/ANN
