The White House's $39 billion chip-making giveaway begins today

Applications for the program's first funding opportunities will be accepted starting March 31.

When President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law in 2022, he put $52 billion in tax credits and funding on the table to help strengthen the state semiconductor industry US, including $39 billion specifically for semiconductor manufacturing incentives. Now, we're starting to see how this initiative will play out: The Biden administration has officially launched the first CHIPS for America funding opportunity, outlining the application process for "projects to build, expand, or upgrade facilities for the production of advanced, current generation and mature node semiconductors."

"First" in the first funding opportunity is the key word here: At the outset, CHIPS for America specifically seeks to fund projects that align with the program's "vision of success" which seeks to have a certain number of peak projects from logic manufacturing facilities and DRAM chip makers by the end of the decade, as well as meeting specific production capacity targets for "current generation and mature node" semiconductors ". The program plans to offer more funding opportunities for R&D facilities and manufacturing equipment at a later date. Applications for these programs will not begin until late spring and fall 2023, but the CHIPS program office is open to receiving expressions of interest from potential applicants.

The program also includes strict safeguards on how the funding is used. Applicants who receive CHIPS funding will be prohibited from using the payments for share buybacks or to pay dividends, and the payments will be tied to meeting specific milestones. It will be some time before the first recipients of CHIPS funding are announced, but promising projects can start submitting applications on March 31, 2023. Want all the details? Check out the full CHIPS for America announcement here.

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