On Friday, U.S. memory chipmaker Micron said it was committed to China. It would invest 4.3 billion yuan ($603 million) over the next few years in its chip packaging facility in the Chinese city of Xian. The company did not disclose the value of the investment or how many jobs it would create. Micron is the world’s biggest maker of DRAM and NAND chips and derives more than 10% of its global revenue from China.
Micron said it would buy the operations and equipment of a Xian-based subsidiary of Taiwan’s Powertech Technology Inc, operating its plant since 2016. The company also plans to open a new production line to manufacture mobile DRAM, NAND, and SSD products at the plant to strengthen its package and test capabilities, it said in a statement on the Chinese social media site WeChat.
The investment project demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to its China business and team and comes just weeks after Beijing imposed curbs on the use of its semiconductors. The U.S. firm has said a ban on selling to China’s top server makers and other critical infrastructure operators could cost it a single-digit percentage of its overall revenue.
Last month, China’s cyberspace regulator said the firm, the United States’ biggest memory chipmaker, had failed a network security review and that the regulator would block operators of crucial infrastructure from buying from the company. Micron denied the allegations and accused the regulator of retaliating against it over sanctions Washington and its allies have imposed on China’s economy.
Micron sued Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co Ltd (FUJIN.UL) and its Taiwanese supplier UMC for stealing its memory-chip design technology. The lawsuit alleged that the pair hired a Micron engineer to help design their $5.7 billion factory in Fujian province two years ago. Micron grew suspicious after the engineer turned to Google for instructions on wiping a company laptop and showed PowerPoint slides with internal code names to recruiters for UMC at recruiting events in the United States, court documents said.
