New lobby club of chip and tech companies calls for billion dollar investments in the US

Major chip and tech companies have established a new lobby organization. All major chip makers and also companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google are asking the US Congress to pledge 50 billion dollars in investments in the chip industry.

The new lobby club is called Semiconductors in America Coalition and is made up of members of the American Semiconductor Industry Association and other international tech companies. The 64-member organization writes that the United States’ share of global chip production capacity has declined from 37 percent in 1990 to 12 percent today.

According to the organization, that decrease is due to substantial subsidies offered by governments of other countries for building factories. The US therefore has a competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting new factories for the production of semiconductors.

The Chips for America Act, the plan set up and approved by the US government last year, is intended to grow chip production on US soil again. The aim of that project is to invest 50 billion in local chip production and research. However, that money has not yet been promised and the lobby club registers an open letter to the US Congress asking them to do so.

The SIAC consists of American chip makers, such as AMD, Broadcom, Globalfoundries, IBM, Intel, Marvell, Micron, Nvidia, ON Semiconductor, Qualcomm and Western Digital. In addition, the lobby organization is supported by companies such as Amazon, Cisco, Google, HPE and Microsoft. Arm, Infineon, Kioxia, MediaTek, Nikon, NXP, Samsung, SK Hynix and TSMC have also joined. This means almost the entire global chip industry is represented, with the exception of Chinese companies.