TSMC-backed Vanguard and Dutch firm NXP to build $7.8 billion Singapore wafer plant
A worker moves a wafer bank at NXP semiconductors computer chip fabrication plant in Nijmegen, Netherlands March 14, 2024.
Piroschka Van De Wouw | Reuters
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.-backed Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation and Dutch chip designer and manufacturer NXP Semiconductors will build a $7.8 billion wafer manufacturing plant in Singapore.
Vanguard will have 60% stake in the joint venture — VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — while NXP will hold 40%, according to a joint statement released Wednesday.
The VSMC plant will produce wafers for the automotive, industrial, consumer and mobile device markets, the companies said. TSMC will license the underlying manufacturing technologies required for the project to VSMC.
The new plant, whose construction is expected to start in the second half of 2024, with wafers to be shipped to customers in 2027, is expected to create about 1,500 jobs in Singapore, the joint statement said.
Wafers are a thin slice of semiconductor material used to make microchips.
NXP will invest $1.6 billion in the Singapore plant while Vanguard plans to invest $2.4 billion, the statement said. The firms will also provide an additional $1.9 billion to support the long-term capacity of the plant, with the remaining funding provided by third parties.
“NXP continues to take proactive actions to ensure it has a manufacturing base which provides competitive cost, supply control and geographic resilience to support our long-term growth objectives,” said Kurt Sievers, president and CEO at NXP.
Vanguard, which made a $236 million acquisition of a less advanced wafer facility in Singapore from New York-based contract chipmaker GlobalFoundries in 2019, said the new plant will help it diversify its manufacturing operations.
Singapore has attracted investments from several semiconductor companies, aided by its business-friendly environment.
GlobalFoundries opened a $4 billion chip fabrication plant in Singapore last year, with its president lauding the government’s industrial policies. In 2022 Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp invested $5 billion into its Singapore microchip factory.
Neighbour Malaysia has also emerged as a hotspot for semiconductor companies, with investments from American chip giants Intel and GlobalFoundries. Other companies have also laid out plans to start operations in the country.
TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor foundry, has been building new plants in countries like Japan and the U.S. as its customers seek to de-risk from Taiwan amid intensifying U.S.-China tensions. Last year, NXP invested in TSMC’s first chip plant in Dresden, Germany, TSMC’s first plant in Europe.
Technology
British regulators will soon announce competition remedies for the multibillion-pound cloud industry
Ofcom said it received evidence showing Microsoft makes it less attractive for customers to run its Office productivity apps on cloud infrastructure other than Microsoft Azure.
Igor Golovniov | Sopa Images | Lightrocket via Getty Images
LONDON — Britain’s competition regulator is preparing remedies aimed at solving competition issues in the multibillion-pound cloud computing industry.
The Competition and Markets Authority is set to unveil its provisional decision detailing “behavioral” remedies addressing anti-competitive practices in the sector following a months-long investigation into the market, two sources familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The sources, who preferred to remain anonymous given the investigation’s sensitive nature, said that the cloud market remedies could be announced within the next two weeks. The regulator previously set itself a deadline of November to December 2024 to publish its provisional decision.
A CMA spokesperson declined to comment on the timing of its provisional decision when asked by CNBC.
Cloud infrastructure services is a market that’s dominated by U.S. technology giants Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon is the largest player in the market, offering cloud services via its Amazon Web Services (AWS) arm. Microsoft is the second-largest provider, selling cloud products under its Microsoft Azure unit.
The CMA probe traces its history back to 2022, when U.K. telecoms regulator Ofcom kicked off a market study examining the dominance of cloud giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Ofcom subsequently referred its cloud review to the CMA to address competition issues in the market.
Why is the CMA concerned?
Among the key issues the CMA is expected to address with recommended behavioral remedies, are so-called “egress” fees charging companies for transferring data from one cloud to another, licensing fees viewed as unfair, volume discounts, and interoperability issues that make it harder to switch vendor.
According to one of the sources, there’s a chance Google may be excluded from the scope of the competition remedies given it is smaller in size compared to market leaders AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Amazon and Microsoft declined to comment on this story when contacted by CNBC. Google did not immediately return a request for comment.
What could the remedies look like?
The CMA has said previously in June that it was more minded toward considering behavioral remedies to resolve its concerns as opposed to “structural” remedies, such as ordering divestments or operational separations.
The watchdog said in a working paper in June that it was “at an early stage” of considering potential remedies.
Solutions floated at the time included imposing price controls restricting the level of egress fees, lowering technical barriers to switching cloud providers, and banning agreements encouraging firms to commit more spend in return for discounts.
One contentious measure the regulator said it was considering was requiring Microsoft to apply the same pricing for its productivity software products regardless of which cloud they’re hosted on — a move that would have a significant impact on Microsoft’s pricing structures.
CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell is set to hold a speech on Thursday at Chatham House, a U.K. policy institute. In an interview with the Financial Times, she defended the regulator’s track record on competition enforcement amid criticisms from Prime Minister Keir Starmer that the agency was holding back growth.
She is expected to outline plans for a review in 2025 into whether the CMA should more frequently use behavioral remedies when approving deals, the FT reported.
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Bitcoin breached the $95,000 level for the first time Wednesday evening as investors continued pricing in a second Donald Trump presidency.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by more than 3% at $97,646.68, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose as high as $97,788.00.
Shares of MicroStrategy, a bitcoin proxy, gained 3% in extended trading. Mining stocks rose as well, with Mara Holdings up 4%.
Bitcoin continues its march toward $100,000
Bitcoin has been regularly hitting fresh records this month on hopes that Trump will usher in a golden age of crypto, which would include more supportive regulation for the industry and a potential national strategic bitcoin reserve or stockpile.
It is widely expected to reach $100,000 this year and double by the end of 2025.
“Bitcoin’s price continues to be driven by a number of factors including improved liquidity conditions, increased institutional adoption, and a regulatory environment that has flipped from a headwind to a tailwind,” said Sam Callahan, an analyst at Swan Bitcoin.
Another Trump term also implies larger budget deficits, potentially more inflation and changes to the international role of the dollar – all things that would have a positive impact on the price of bitcoin.
Bitcoin has gained more than 127% in 2024.
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