Half of the education fund will be spent inside Ohio in grants for two and four year colleges in order to train workers to staff what Intel is calling the largest semiconductor manufacturing facility on the planet. The other $50M will be invested nationally in STEM programs and will be matched by the US National Science Foundation.
Intel said the education investment will be spread out over the next decade.
According to the company, the plant will employ 3,000 workers making an average of $135,000 a year. Additionally, 7,000 construction jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs are expected to be created.
Construction is set to begin at the end of 2022 and Intel expects the factories to become operational in 2025.
New Albany is gifting Intel with a 30 year 100% property tax abatement on the massive 1,000 acre facility. The state of Ohio is also giving Intel $600 million to offset the increased costs of building factories in the US rather than Asia where construction and staffing costs are significantly lower. JobsOhio, the economic development arm of the state government, is adding an additional $150 million for economic development and workforce grants.
Moreover, the Ohio state government is also promising another $650 million for infrastructure improvements to the area, which presumably provides benefits outside of the Intel factory.
That is a steep price to get Intel’s new factory into Ohio but the gamble could pay off if everything Intel is promising comes to pass. In addition to the $20 billion, two facility project it has committed to, Keyvan Esfarjani, Intel senior vice president of Manufacturing, Supply Chain and Operations has hinted at the possibility of an additional $100 billion investment creating six additional large facilities, but stressed that “will depend heavily on funding from the CHIPS Act.”
The CHIPS Act is a bipartisan bill that provides $52 billion in funding for semiconductor manufacturing. It was signed into law in January 2021 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act but was left unfunded. This year the Senate passed the Innovation and Competition Act, which would have funded the CHIPS Act, but it has since stalled in the House of Representatives.