Semiconductor chip plants cost a ton of money. Here's why - qz.com

As the global semiconductor industry accelerates, companies are announcing chip factory investments worth tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars. However, most of this spending does not go towar... Read original →

Semiconductor manufacturing has escalated from commercial rivalry to a national strategic imperative. With EUV tools costing nearly $400 million apiece and equipment constituting up to 80% of a 3nm fab’s capital outlay—far exceeding construction expenses—the technical barrier is reshaping the entire stack: upstream material suppliers must meet unprecedented purity specs, while downstream OSATs pivot toward chiplet integration to amortize wafer costs. Government subsidies like the U.S. CHIPS Act ease near-term capex burdens but amplify compliance risks, as export controls and localization mandates lengthen supply chain lead times. TSMC (Taiwan, China), Samsung, and Intel will accelerate fab deployments across the U.S., Europe, and Japan in the next 12–24 months, yet yield ramping faces hard constraints from ASML’s EUV delivery bottlenecks and a global shortage of process engineers. Crucially, smaller foundries are now permanently locked out of advanced nodes, cementing a triopoly and ushering in an era of capital intensity, geopolitical oversight, and extreme operational complexity.