Samsung announces plans to build $15bn Chip Research Centre in South Korea

Barely a month after Samsung announced plans to build 11 semiconductor plants in Texas worth $191 billion, they have come out again with a plan to establish a $15 billion chip research centre in South Korea.

The company hopes to complete the project by 2028, a move it hopes will help them scale exponentially and become a top player in the semiconductor market.

Further details on the plan reveal that the research centre will be established at Samsung’s Giheung campus to facilitate research on new technologies such as wafer fabrication processes for memory and system semiconductors. The research facility is expected to take up about 109,000 square meters.

Samsung’s Giheung campus was the company’s first semi-conductor plant and will also go down in history as the home to the world’s first 64MB DRAM.

“We are taking on a new challenge from the very location where we broke ground 40 years ago to build our first semiconductor plant," Samsung vice chairman, Jay Y Lee said. “If we hadn't made bold R&D investments for next-generation products and in products that came after that, there would be no semiconductor business for Samsung today. We need to continue our tradition of investing preemptively and emphasising technology”

The ongoing global chip shortage resulting from the closure of business operations during the COVID period continues to be a major concern for Big Tech but Samsung will be happy to have recorded the highest profits in a single quarter since 2018.

The company was able to avoid losses by increasing the prices of its semiconductors.