FILE PHOTO: Micron Technology's solid-state drive for data center customers is presented at a product launch event in San Francisco, U.S., October 24, 2019. REUTERS/Stephen Nellis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Memory chip maker Micron Technology said on Thursday it is expanding its U.S. investments by $30 billion as President Donald Trump presses companies to boost U.S. investments and threatens new tariffs on semiconductors.
Micron now says its planned investments will total $200 billion. The company last year said it planned to invest around $100 billion in manufacturing in New York and $25 billion in Idaho.
In December, the U.S. Commerce Department under former President Joe Biden finalized a nearly $6.2 billion government subsidy for Micron to produce semiconductors in New York and Idaho, one of the largest government awards to chip companies under the $52.7 billion 2022 CHIPS and Science Act.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to kill the CHIPS act. His administration is renegotiating some of Biden's grants to semiconductor firms, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week.
AI chip leader and Micron customer Nvidia said in April it is planning to build AI servers worth as much as $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years with help from partners such as Taiwan's TSMC.
Micron's additional investment will center around building a second leading-edge memory fab in Boise, Idaho, and expanding a manufacturing facility in Manassas, Virginia.
"These investments are designed to allow Micron to meet expected market demand, maintain share and support Micron's goal of producing 40% of its DRAM in the U.S," the company said, referring to a type of widely employed memory chip.
DRAM chips are key components in personal computing, cars, industrial operations, wireless communications and artificial intelligence and Micron's High-Bandwidth Memory is critical for enabling new AI models, officials have said.
The company will also dedicate about $50 billion to R&D, Micron said.
"Micron's investment in advanced memory manufacturing and HBM capabilities in the U.S., with support from (the) Trump administration, is an important step forward for the AI ecosystem," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said.
Micron also said it finalized a $275 million direct funding award under the CHIPS Act to expand its Manassas facility.
(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Maju Samuel and Matthew Lewis)
