Intel INTC.O has chosen the east German city of Magdeburg as the site for a new multibillion-euro European chip factory and will make the decision public on March 4, a person familiar with matter told Reuters.
www.reuters.com
Intel to build new fab in eastern Germany. Official announcements to come soon I guess
(TSMC also rumored to follow suit with a fab in EU but nothing concrete so far.)
Within the next 3 years: 100B+ USD TSMC, 100B+ USD Samsung, 40B+ Intel. Some estimates put TSMC's investment from 2022 - 2024 to be in 120B+ USD range with a staggering
official commitment of 44B USD in 2022 alone.
From history, the record was held by Samsung with 93B USD over 2017-2020 years and they have been the top spender from 2004 to 2021 barring one year in 2009.
2022 could go to TSMC with Samsung a close second.
Samsung's investments comprises of the memory business as well, which decreases their overall available capital expenditure on logic but nevertheless they have shown they can sustain their investment over two decades and it also means they can sustain R&D capital expenditure even with years of trailing behind TSMC.
The sheer magnitude of Samsung’s spending over the 2017-2020 timeperiod ($93.2 billion) is unprecedented in the history of the semiconductor industry!
With lots of fabs being planned I really hope there really is some consistent demand otherwise these investments would be really painful to sustain and not sure if these giants can recover their investments.
But nevertheless it is relieving to see more fabs planned outside of SK and Taiwan, which is a bit unnerving since we are always one disaster away from chip meltdown.