Dive Brief:
- Lam Research announced that it had broken ground on a research and development center in Tualatin, Oregon, part of a $3 billion, five-year planned investment in the company’s global lab network for the creation of advanced AI chips.
- Located close to key customers, the new 120,000-square-foot facility is expected to increase cleanroom lab space at the Lam Tualatin R&D center by more than 50% when completed, the company said in a news release.
- Lam Research said the new lab will be one of its most advanced, increasing its manufacturing capacity and ability to collaborate with customers, as well as compressing product development cycles. It is expected to open in 2028.
Dive Insight:
The announcement comes during a time of rapid expansion in the U.S. semiconductor industry. For example, Arizona is set to host two of the country’s largest semiconductor manufacturing campuses, while TSMC made another $100 billion U.S. investment and Texas A&M broke ground on a $226 million R&D facility.
There also have been a number of large semiconductor deals in recent months, including Onsemi’s purchase of Synaptics and Apple’s addition of four semiconductor companies to its American Manufacturing Program.
Lam Research’s new Oregon facility is part of a planned multibuilding expansion at the company’s Tualatin campus. It will be the company’s largest investment in Oregon and is expected to create more than 400 jobs, increasing the total number of jobs the company supports in the state to more than 11,000, according to a news release. It is also expected to increase the company’s annual economic contribution in Oregon to more than $1.8 billion.
The lab will support advanced deposition and etch process development, materials science and hardware validation, the company said. Engineers will be able to work with customers on-site on all phases of product development, from ideation to deployment. Customers will include Intel, Micron Technology and others.
"Intel has enjoyed close collaboration with Lam in Oregon and around the world for decades,” Naga Chandrasekaran, executive vice president and chief technology and operations officer of Intel Foundry, said in a statement. “With this new lab facility, we look forward to working even more closely together to accelerate process development at chip scale, quickly evaluate new technologies, and deliver the breakthroughs required for the next generation of AI-driven computing."
Washington County, where Tualatin is located, recently approved a strategic investment program with Lam Research, under which the company pledges to invest $1.7 billion in Tualatin through 2041. The proposed agreement, which includes payments to the county and city partners in lieu of property taxes to support community-wide services, must be approved by the Oregon Business Development Commission.
The Tualatin lab is part of a larger $3 billion multisite expansion that is expected to increase experiment capacity by more than 50%, Lam Research said in a separate news release. The company has facilities in the United States, Asia and Europe. Combined, these facilities support more than 1 million experiments annually and share tools, data and expertise, per the news release.
“Lam's R&D approach combines specialized labs worldwide, each purpose-built to accelerate a distinct step of the innovation cycle, with deep customer collaboration that includes locations near customer facilities,” it said.
