WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A major South Korean computer chipmaker said Wednesday it plans to spend more than $3.87 billion in Indiana to build a semiconductor packaging plant and a research and development center.
SK Hynix expects the campus to create as many as 800 high-paid jobs in technology, technical support, administration and maintenance by the end of 2030.
The investment will bring Indiana to the forefront of artificial intelligence in America, said Purdue University President Mung Chiang. The new plant will be built in the Purdue Research Park, an economic development incubator at the university.
The company said the factory will produce high-bandwidth memory chips that will help meet U.S. semiconductor demand, develop future generations of chips and house an advanced packaging research and development line at the 430,000-square-foot facility (nearly 40,000 sq. meters). ) about 100 miles southeast of Chicago.
“We believe this project will lay the foundation for a new Silicon Heartland, a semiconductor ecosystem centered in the Midwest,” company CEO Kwak Noh-Jung said in a press release.
Governor Eric Holcomb said the project “not only reaffirms the state’s role in the hard-tech sector, but is another huge step forward in advancing American innovation and national security.”
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered the company up to $3 million in incentive-based training grants, up to $3 million in production readiness grants, up to $80 million in performance payments, up to $554.7 million in tax credits and other incentives. The cities of West Lafayette and Lafayette, Tippecanoe County and Duke Energy offered additional incentives.