Micron's $9.5b chip plant to give S'pore foothold in AI space

American tech giant Micron Technology has broken ground for what will be Singapore's first plant producing advanced semiconductors vital for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

- Ovais Subhani

The US$7 billion (S$9.5 billion) high-bandwidth memory (HBM) packaging facility in Woodlands will initially create around 1,400 new jobs and eventually up to 3,000 positions as expansion plans unfold, said chief executive and president Sanjay Mehrotra.

Operations are scheduled to start in 2026, with the expansion of packaging capacity beginning in 2027. The company already employs around 9,000 people here.

HBM chips are made by stacking several layers of memory chips on top of each other to make one chip that stores more data while speeding up processing and consuming less power.

The chips enable graphics cards and accelerators made by companies like Nvidia and AMD to process generative AI workloads at data centres.

"The demand for AI is surging, and the need for memory and storage has never been more critical," said Mr Mehrotra at the ground-breaking ceremony on Jan 8.