Texas Instruments plans to build as many as four semiconductor wafer fabs in Texas, with production starting by 2025 and a potential total investment of ~$30B
The site has the potential to house up to four semiconductor chip manufacturing plants. — Dallas-based Texas Instruments …
Context & Ripple Effects
This November 2021 announcement landed a year after Samsung began weighing a $10B Texas plant of its own, putting the two rivals on the same patch of north Texas at the same moment. TI's commitment — up to four wafer fabs and a potential ~$30B — was the anchor bet that made the state's chipmaking ambitions concrete.
The plan scaled well beyond what was announced here: TI later committed to $60B+ across US plants including two more Sherman factories, and by mid-2025 its 300mm Sherman fab was producing chips destined for iPhones. A 2023 survey already counted six Texas projects worth $61B, confirming the cluster this announcement seeded.
First-order effects
- TI locks in a multi-year, up-to-$30B capital program on a single Texas site, with production targeted by 2025 — a direct bet on owning analog capacity rather than renting foundry slots.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's parallel Texas deliberation turns the state into a two-player buildout race, and the combined projects — six totaling $61B and 8K+ jobs by 2023 — pull equipment suppliers, construction trades, and engineering talent toward a single regional labor market.
Third-order effects
- Owning fabs changes TI's strategic options downstream: the same company that announced these plants later agreed to acquire Silicon Labs for ~$7.5B, suggesting vertically integrated capacity owners consolidate design assets on top of their manufacturing base rather than the reverse.
The trend: US semiconductor manufacturing is re-concentrating in Texas as merchant-owned fabs scale from single-site bets into decade-long megaprograms.