RICHARDSON, Texas — Texas Instruments has picked Richardson for a big, new manufacturing site.
The facility will garner about $3.1 billion in capital investments and create more than 480 jobs, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Thursday on his website.
The Dallas-based chipmaker will receive $5.124 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund as part of the deal.
The company picked Richardson for the "facility because of its access to talent, an existing supplier base and multiple airports, as well as operational efficiencies due to the close proximity of the new facility to our existing Richardson factory,” said Kyle Flessner, senior vice president of TI’s Technology & Manufacturing Group, in a prepared statement.
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“This factory is an important step in our strategy to invest in more 300mm manufacturing capacity, which is a competitive advantage for our company and will enable us to continue to support our customers well into the future,” Flessner said.
Texas Instruments said in August it was considering Richardson for a new manufacturing site. The city was just one of the candidates it was evaluating for a potential site, the company noted.
“The Lone Star State continues to be a leader in the development of innovative technologies because of companies like Texas Instruments,” Abbott said.
Texas Instruments (Nasdaq: TXN) has more than a dozen manufacturing sites around the world. It serves about 100,000 customers worldwide and operates in more than 30 countries.
The expansion comes as the company grapples with a difficult market.
Sales fell about 1 percent to $3.72 billion in the fourth quarter year-over-year, the company said in January. Texas Instruments had posted gains in each of the prior quarters last year, though they had been shrinking.
Shares were trading down slightly in afternoon trading.
The company will begin construction on a new parking garage for the Richardson campus for the growing number of employees there, Flessner said in a separate blog post. He noted the new site will produce 300 millimeter wafers -- which pack more than twice the number of analog chips than the 200 millimeter-wafer versions.
"We anticipate starting construction in the next few years, but exact timing of factory construction, tool installation and the addition of several hundred jobs to support the new factory will be influenced by market demand and other factors," Flessner said.
