There has been a delay in the $25 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant construction project of US chipmaker Intel Corp. located in Kiryat Gat, Israel, known as Fab 28.
A proposal agreed upon by the chipmaker and the Israeli government in December 2023, according to local outlet Israeli media [in Hebrew], is that contracts for the provision of equipment needed to establish the new factory have been cancelled for Intel’s suppliers in the country.
Intel is a technology company among the world’s biggest producers of semiconductor chips, headquartered in Silicon Valley.
Two months after Israel began its ruthless bombing campaign in Gaza, activists urged investors to sell their Intel stock and big institutions to refrain from awarding contracts to companies that use Intel chips.
Newsng gathered that Intel has been writing lately to ask for a delay in the plant’s construction.
When questioned about the report, the US corporation did not specifically address the project, instead focusing on the necessity of adjusting huge projects to shifting deadlines.
Intel said in a statement, “Israel continues to be one of our key global manufacturing and R&D sites, and we remain fully committed to the region.”
“Managing large-scale projects, especially in our industry, often involves adapting to changing timelines. Our decisions are based on business conditions, market dynamics and responsible capital management,” it added.
According to Intel’s annual report, Israel is the company’s third-largest operating location by asset size, behind the US and Ireland. In the 2010s,
For fifty years, the multinational semiconductor company has been a part of Israel. Nearly 12,000 people work for it in its Kiryat Gat manufacturing facility and its three R&D centres in Haifa, Petah Tikva, and Jerusalem.
The US chip giant, Intel, recently unveiled technologies it claimed would lead the artificial intelligence revolution, striking a defiant tone in the face of fierce competition from competitors Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm.
