The Biden administration is set to announce on Thursday that it will invest an estimated $825 million in a new federally funded semiconductor research facility in upstate New York.
The decision to locate the facility in Albany comes after a long-running push by Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader and a Democrat of New York, to base it in his home state.
Albany will serve as one major hub of a bigger organization, the National Semiconductor Technology Center, which will focus on computer chip research and development, Mr. Schumer’s office said. The center is a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to revitalize American high-tech manufacturing and lessen the country’s dependence on foreign sources of technology.
The New York site will focus on research into the complex machinery that is necessary to manufacture chips. The locations of the other two hubs, which will focus on how chips are designed and packaged together, will be announced later.
Mr. Schumer said in an interview on Wednesday that the New York investment would produce research that benefited the country, cement U.S. leadership in advanced chip technology over China and provide a major source of manufacturing employment for the area.
“This is historic,” he said. “It’s going to keep our country, our national security and our economic security way ahead.”
The funding for the facility comes out of an $11 billion pot of money set aside for research and development in the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan law passed in 2022.
The law also gave the Commerce Department $39 billion to distribute as subsidies for companies building manufacturing plants in the United States. The Biden administration has so far made preliminary agreements to award companies more than $30 billion, though most of the money has not been doled out yet.
The Biden administration has billed the chips program as a success, saying that it has spurred significant growth in new factory construction, and that the United States is set to be the only country with major factories from all five of the world’s leading chip manufacturers.
Some chipmakers have criticized the slow pace of funding, saying that they are waiting on government decisions and cannot move forward with investments. Other companies have pushed back timelines for the construction of their new facilities amid a cyclical slump in the chip market.
Biden administration officials have described the funding for chip research and development as key to the overall success of developing a domestic semiconductor industry. Officials have stressed that investing in the design and development of new chips will help the United States lead in critical industries like artificial intelligence.
Commerce Department officials, who outlined plans for the new technology center last year, said the organization would aim to reduce the time it takes to test new design ideas. Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said it would also help “cut in half the projected cost of moving a new chip from concept to commercialization over the next decade.”
Designing a new advanced chip can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Given the steep costs, it can be difficult for researchers and start-ups to secure funding.
To ease those challenges, federal officials have said the new organization would establish an investment fund to support promising start-ups and provide access to manufacturing facilities that allow for the experimentation of new ideas.
Several lawmakers have been vying for the federal government to establish the chip research hubs in their states, including Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas; Senators Alex Padilla and Laphonza Butler, both Democrats of California; and Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia.
The announcement represented the culmination of a yearslong effort by Mr. Schumer to allocate more funding to the chip industry, both nationally and in New York. Mr. Schumer first secured federal funding for chips research in a 2020 bill, then worked with the Biden administration to pass the CHIPS Act.
Mr. Schumer personally made the case to locate a semiconductor research facility in Albany to a parade of administration officials that he brought through New York, including the president.
The new organization will be based within what is already the largest chip research center in North America, the Albany NanoTech Complex. Technology companies including IBM, GlobalFoundries and ASML carry out research at the site.
The center will also be one of only two public facilities in the world to have an advanced type of chip-making equipment called a “High NA” machine. The latest generation of equipment made by the Dutch firm ASML, the machine uses mirrors, plasma and lasers to print features just a few atoms wide, allowing chip makers to pack enough computing power onto semiconductors to perform complex computations.
Mr. Schumer said the announcement would help make upstate New York one of the country’s busiest hubs for chip production. Chip makers GlobalFoundries, Micron Technology and Wolfspeed have been given preliminary awards to build or expand facilities in New York. If all of those plans are realized, Mr. Schumer said, a quarter of the chips made in the United States will be manufactured in the corridor between Buffalo and Albany.
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