The CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022, provided $52 billion in tax credits and funding to support the US semiconductor industry, with $39 billion specifically designated for semiconductor manufacturing incentives. Now, we are beginning to observe how that initiative will develop: The application procedure for “projects to construct, expand or modernize commercial facilities for the production of leading-edge, current-generation and mature-node semiconductors” has been laid out by the Biden Administration for the first CHIPS for America funding opportunity.
The key word here is “first” in first funding opportunity: The “vision for success” of CHIPS for America, which aims to have a number of cutting-edge logic fabrication facilities and DRAM chip manufacturers by the end of the decade, as well as specific production capacity goals for “current-generation and mature-node” semiconductors, is the primary focus of the program’s initial funding efforts. In the future, the program intends to provide additional funding opportunities for R&D and manufacturing equipment facilities. Although the CHIPS Program Office is open to receiving expressions of interest from potential applicants, applications for those programs won’t open until late spring or fall of 2023.
Additionally, there are strict guidelines for how funding is used in the program. The recipients of CHIPS funding will not be able to use the funds for dividends or stock buybacks, and they will be tied to achieving particular milestones. The first recipients of CHIPS funding won’t be announced for a while, but hopeful projects will be able to start submitting applications on March 31, 2023.
