U.S. Chip Firms Bet Big on R&D

On 12 October, Applied Materials unveiled a multibillion-dollar research facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley . The company first announced in 2023 plans to invest US $4 billion in its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center, but now says it will invest even more: about $5 billion. The boost is part of a wider growth in private investment that is both enlarging the U.S. semiconductor R&D sector and making it more complex. The EPIC announcement follows others, in August, by two semiconductor firms. Memory chipmaker Micron disclosed that it would invest $10 billion over 10 years at its Boise, Idaho, memory research lab, and SK Hynix said it will spend $4 billion on an advanced packaging facility in West Lafayette, Ind. (Neither of those c