Texas hands Texas Instruments $33.6M to grow its wafer output

AUSTIN — Gov. Greg Abbott announced on July 9 that Texas Instruments will receive a $33.6 million grant from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund to support an expansion of its 300-millimeter wafer fabrication plant in Richardson, according to the governor's office.

The award backs a capacity and technology investment the company has valued at roughly $700 million at the site, known as RFAB. Texas Instruments is the largest analog and embedded-processing chipmaker in the United States, and the Richardson complex is one of its flagship domestic manufacturing operations.

The grant is the newest disbursement from a state fund that has quickly become a barometer of where Texas wants its chip industry to expand. While the Texas Instruments award goes to the Dallas area, the fund's spending has skewed heavily toward Central Texas, where Austin-area design shops, materials suppliers and research facilities have captured the large majority of the dollars handed out so far.

State support for semiconductors has intensified as governments treat domestic chip capacity as a strategic priority. The fund is modest relative to the private capital required to build and equip a fab, but it functions as a public signal — and a way for the state to attach itself to expansions that companies might undertake anyway.

Why it matters

Every new fab expansion in Texas strengthens a supply chain that Austin sits near the center of, from equipment servicing to engineering talent. The Texas Instruments award reinforces a statewide push that has already made Central Texas a chief beneficiary. The open question is whether public incentives are shaping genuinely new investment or subsidizing capacity that would have come regardless — a debate that will follow the fund as its awards grow.